Last Days

[NEON MERCURY]

i found this film really borign and tedius.  i loved gerry thought elephant was good [but dorky] and this is a overall weak film...i hate michael pitt.  i think it had somethign to do w/ the dreamers.  i got mad b/c that hey joe song he did was laughably bad and annoying.  and i hate the fact that his penis is biiger thasn mine.  how could someone like m. pitt have a bigger [and fatter] penis than me?  that shit is fucked up.  but all the caracters were stupid.  blake is an annoyins mumblign bitch.  his freinds are losers.  i had no empathy for him.  the only thing i thought that was cool was when he


spoilers
killed himself than his soul climbed up.  that was neat.

the part that was the stupidest was the two douche bags kissing.  its no fucking point to that.  i dotn mind gay shit but have  a point.  in idaho that shit was good.  but in this and elephant its fuckign stupid.   


sorry van sant, i am too smart to let this weak film grab me...

[RegularKarate]

sorry van sant, i am too smart to let this weak film grab me...

haha... you're so goddamn homophobic that it's hilarious.  I think you're probably kinda gay.

I dont' understand, Neon... it's like there's two Neons... one cool and one that gives really bad reviews and says dumb shit about war.

Bring cool Neon back.

[NEON MERCURY]

sorry van sant, i am too smart to let this weak film grab me...

haha... you're so goddamn homophobic that it's hilarious.  I think you're probably kinda gay.

I dont' understand, Neon... it's like there's two Neons... one cool and one that gives really bad reviews and says dumb shit about war.

Bring cool Neon back.

hmm, well, despite my repeated use of the word "gay" meaning lame i dont see how one can think i am homophobic.  but i am kind of gay....[i was curious and once saw my best friends penis while we were swimming]]. but i am just saying that i thought is was piontless.  just like in elephant when those two kids kissed-it served no point but just to creep people out an dmake them feel uneasy for no reason.  REMEMBER: i think the gay shit in my own private idaho was perfect.  but in last days and elephant it was pointless and stupid...and i hop ethe same poeple that liked bunny liked this also...its the same meandering "wow! this is art" type of film...and its nothing against van sant: i like good will, mopi, and gerry a whole hell of a lot.  i can relate or i liked the idea of gerry about teh teo guys lost together...and the shot in scene where ther gerry's are walkign like zombies in the early dawn was fuckign awesome...but in last days i didnt give a shit about blake  he's was a fucking loser..the film didnt affect me and i dotn see ho wit coudl "touch" others also.  gt is right about this one...its fucking fake man

[RegularKarate]

I understand your not liking it, I was taking issue with your idea that the kissing scene here and in elephant were "pointless"... I think that's a ridiculous statement to make and even more ridiculous is saying that it's there to make people feel uncomfortable. 

Obviously if it hadn't been a same sex kiss in either films, you wouldn't have said one thing about it.

[bonanzataz]

but in last days i didnt give a shit about blake  he's was a fucking loser..the film didnt affect me and i dotn see ho wit coudl "touch" others also.

right. blake sucks. he is boring. to me, kurt cobain's suicide was so romantic. like, man, what a tortured artist he was. he must've had some strong principles in life to feel that bad and do that to himself. this movie paints a picture of a rock star who's life is just so boring and shitty and he's just a dumb, loser heroin addict who can play good music and that's all there is to him. the only reason his friends hang out with him is to feel like they're rock stars, fuck each other in his house, complain about the heat when they're getting a free place to live, and just act like total douchebags to this dumb, depressed asshole. i hated michael pitt b/c of the dreamers also. i still dislike him, but i was so glad to find out that he hardly says anything in this movie. van sant just saw his dick and was like, "cast this boy so i can have an erection all day!" halfway through, i forgot it was michael pitt. it's not like the role of a practically mute lazy drug addict who is supposed to have no expression or emotion at all is a hard one to play. this movie had its faults (i didn't think the humor was that funny - cobain in a dress with the telephone book ad-salesman was amusing at best), but it definitely offered a unique perspective on things. and it was pretty. and i like painfully slow movies with pretty cinematography when i'm high.

also, the homosexuality. while i agree it didn't have much of a place in this movie, it worked in elephant. in elephant, he just gives every reason possible for WHY they would have done what they did, just never comes out and explicitly states this is the reason. i thought in last days it was just an excuse to shock the audience out of the catatonic state they were slowly slipping into. as in, "i'm fucking bored, i'm fucking bored, i'm fucking bored, TWO DUDES KISSING?! now i have no idea what the fuck this movie is about, but at least i'm awake."

[JG]

the fact that this movie was unscripted shows that van sant is just being lazy, and then marking it off as "art."  when i first saw it, i wanted to like.   just cause it's boring doesn't mean it's artsy. 

anyone could have made this movie.  pretty amateur.  nothing stimulating. 

the cinemetography was decent and a couple things were funny, but nothing was thought provoking. 

2.5/4

[bonanzataz]

but everybody's under the pretense that he's deliberately TRYING to be artsy. this movie is just so minimalist, it doesn't feel like it's trying to be anything, it just is. i find it much better than certain acclaimed artsy movies that just try to cram SO MUCH weridness and artsiness into their running time that it just ends up too cluttered. this movie is more of an exercise in telling a story and directing actors rather than being a full, fleshed out movie, and it works. we all know van sant is capable of making a really good, solid movie and of course, coming from that, he knows his audience is going to be frustrated. he doesn't care. it was an excuse to shoot film with a talented young group of actors and do things differently, and you really don't see a move like that coming from a director over the age of 50 these days. these movies were huge risks and could have (in fact, very well may have) killed his career. i like this and elephant (i haven't seen gerry) b/c you just sit back and watch and you don't really get overwhelmed or even underwhelmed. it's just kind of there and he's presenting it to you without the fancy packaging. love it or hate it, it's a different way of presenting ideas and i thought it worked.

[JG]

to enjoy the movie, you kinda just have to let it be.  you're right, it's very minimalist, and the only way to enjoy it is to just let yourself be absorbed by it.  i liked it while watching it.  it's only with time that i have decided that it really wasn't that great, but while watching it i let it work and it did.

it's not good or bad, van sant can just do so much more it's frustrating.  yeah, frustrating.

[Pastor Parsley]

If you're willing to experiment, you should be willing to fail.  With film, there is too little experimentation due to the high expense.  I would rather directors take risks trying to do something new, or at least out of the ordinary, than keep putting out more of the same.

Besides, plot and dialogue have been used as a crutch for too long.  Like the old saying in writing goes: show don't tell.  These days they use contrived plots force the characters into interaction so that they can tell the whole story in dialogue.

[matt35mm]

That's deep yo.

[soixante]

Last Days is not devoid of a plot.  Van Sant lingers over details that other directors would skip or cut out.

Using the classification system developed by Robert McKee, Last Days is an example of the "disillusionment plot."  Van Sant eschews the usual biopic approach of showing Blake's rise and fall (Act I -- struggling for recognition; Act II -- hitting the big time; Act III -- realizing that success isn't all it's cracked up to be).  He focuses on Blake at the tail end of his career and life.  His back-story is revealed by the people from his past who try (and fail) to make contact or save him.  At any time, Blake could choose to get out of his downward spiral.  But he chooses death instead.  His character arc goes from burned out to dead.

A more obvious filmmaker (like Cameron Crowe) would have Blake says stuff like, "I used to love music, now I'm burned out, and I don't care anymore.  Life's not worth living anymore."  Van Sant lets Blake's silence speak for itself.

[Pastor Parsley]

Last Days is not devoid of a plot. Van Sant lingers over details that other directors would skip or cut out.

Yeah, he cuts out act I, Act II and the first part of act III.  Yes, there is a plot but it's all back-story.  I don't know if that counts though.  I think it's fine though.

Ozu did a lot with character driven pieces without or with very little plot.  It seems to me that the most interesting thing about any story is the characters.  Even with plot heavy films, the plot is just used to show the character development.

[Gold Trumpet]

Last Days is not devoid of a plot. Van Sant lingers over details that other directors would skip or cut out.

Yeah, he cuts out act I, Act II and the first part of act III.  Yes, there is a plot but it's all back-story.  I don't know if that counts though.  I think it's fine though.

Ozu did a lot with character driven pieces without or with very little plot.  It seems to me that the most interesting thing about any story is the characters.  Even with plot heavy films, the plot is just used to show the character development.

Ozu wasn't adverse to plot or character development the way Last Days is. Tokyo Story has as much detail as most American films. The focus is a meditation that aligns the drama to a common thread which may appear as nothing happening.

I understand the appreciation for Last Days, but I can't correlate the appreciation to the finished film I saw. At best, Last Days is an attempt for structural innovation. Its amateur hour for me as I can't see a higher purpose to the film.

[Pastor Parsley]

Ozu wasn't adverse to plot or character development the way Last Days is. Tokyo Story has as much detail as most American films. The focus is a meditation that aligns the drama to a common thread which may appear as nothing happening.

I know very little film theory, and I know you well enough from your posts that you are way ahead of me in that regard.  I always thought that plot had more to do with a causal relationship, and a unifying thread really was considerd a narrative but not a plot.  I honestly don't know enough to say for sure.

I was just listening to the Floating Weeds commentary not long ago and according to the Japanese film historian, Donald Richie who said "Most Ozu films are devoid of plot.  Ozu thought that plot uses people and to use them is to misuse them.  He believed characters create story and not the other way around."

At best, Last Days is an attempt for structural innovation.

I agree completely.

Its amateur hour for me as I can't see a higher purpose to the film.

I guess for me it doesn't need to have a higher purpose other than an attempt at structural innovation.  Anytime a filmmaker makes any attempt, at any innovation I applaud their efforts.  Most don't attempt anything innovative, in my opinion.

[soixante]

It's a matter of semantics -- one man's plot is another man's character study. 

One thing to consider is whether Van Sant's approach suited the subject matter.  I think it did, because Blake is pretty much running on fumes.  He sits around, eats cereal, walks around, upon a rare occasion he attempts to cut a song or two.  Van Sant focuses on the minute details of such an existence, which I think is just as illuminating as doing a traditional biopic in which lots of information is stuffed into a two-hour film.  Less is more.