Last Days -Beautiful cinematography, great film

[npcoombs]

Just finished watching Last Days on DVD and all I can say is wow! The cinematography in this film is pretty incredible - the use of interesting compositions, static, long shots is hypnotic. The rock-star-Kurt-Cobain theme is almost irrelevant. This is a tragic, melancholy and romantic film about death. As such the decaying mansion and nature are interwoven subtlety so that stillness becomes the norm. The intrusion of the 'real world in the form of visitors to the house, makes the outside world look ridiculous and crass.

On shot particularly stood out because it reminded me so much of some of the footage from 'Grizzly Man' where Treadwell sets his camera up for a macho action shot and leaves it on the much more entrancing natural scene. in 'Last Days' Blake is being chased by his tour promoters and he runs out into the garden and trips. The camera then remains on a shrub for something like 30 seconds- just watching the leaves blow around in the breeze.

The editing of Last Days is also hypnotic with a number of key shots and composition repeated rhythmically throughout the film. Most of the time you cannot discern what anyone is saying very clearly and communication in the house and with the outsiders is virtually nil. In this respect the film reminded me of Stanley Kubrick's work.

Masterpiece 5/5


On the other hand, 'Manderlay' by Lars Von Trier is a patently ludicrous and redundant film. I had high expectations about this film after enjoying Dogville, but rather than using his scenario of the continuation of slavery for a blistering polemic about race relations in America he gets caught up in his own diabolic plot twists until the final conclusion is so ridiculous that the portentous commentary at the end of the film and montage of the Klu Klux Klan seems utterly bizarre.

See if you can make more of it than I did :?

3/5

[steve hyde]

...it's interesting that "Last Days" connected with you so strongly. I agree that the cinematography is amazing, but the film didn't connect with me for some reason. Maybe if it wasn't about Kurt Cobain, I'd feel different about it, but since it is I find it to be a very odd portrait of an immensely talented kid who was one of the great poetic minds to come out of a culture that has been close to me. I guess my own memories render the film inauthentic somehow since I cannot view it without judging the claims it makes.... I'm left feeling uneasy about it... I suppose this speaks to the power of it in some ways...

In terms of films that are masterpieces - i just saw one and watched it two nights in a row. It is one of the best films I have ever seen. I encountered it when I decided I finally needed to sit down to watch Krysztof Kieslowski's "Trois Couleurs" ( a three feature trilogy made in the early 1990s) I watched them in the order that they were made: Blue, White, Red and I was drawn into all of the stories since each film is remarkably well crafted - made at the end of the filmmakers prolific career - brilliant storytelling and visuality. For me the Red film is pure and simple masterpiece material. I can't think of a better film. It's as good as Kurasawa's "Ikiru"....

I guess I must be attracted to "foreign" films.

Steve

[Evan Kubota]

Steve - you should definitely check out more Kieslowski. Trois Couleurs is fantastic but Double vie de Véronique is even more challenging and richly drawn. His more political features from the late 70s are also great (Camera Buff, The Scar, etc)

At first "Red" was my favorite of the trilogy also, but "White" is very interesting in the structure of the narrative. It and "Blue" display the most overt constructedness, which is fantastic in the hands of a director as adept as Kieslowski was. "Red" is more transparent and inhabitable, I think. It should really be considered as a whole, though, and I would say that overall, the entire trilogy is my favorite ;) Paul Coates has an excellent long paper about Kieslowski and Trois Couleurs as well as a good book on Polish cinema in general.

Not a huge Van Sant fan, but I've met Michael Pitt and he seemed pretty cool. I'll probably check out Last Days eventually.