Last Chants for a Slow Dance

A Road film about a bum father who just wants to go out and have fun AND find something he could maybe get by on. Repeated in four sections.

This really reminds me of Wanda(1970) with the landscape fetishism of Benning AND predicts the early 80's Araki. Its practically for scenes that is loosely tied together with by a central character as he travel middle America AND be the best worst self with a song playing every change of scene. It works really well in slow cinema kind of way. It harks the early films of Morrissey where the film is about the characters. The story is almost secondary.

About the style, beautiful and tastefully independent. It was just apparently made for only 2000 usd. There are scenes especially in the crucial last moments where the actor was literally looking at the camera. I think that is the only amateur moment of the film. Even with its less is more moments - you could see a director who knows his craft. Its masterfully uses every part of the film to show more (ir the narration over a bed scene). Also interesting use of both color and BW.

I could not really comment on the performances even with how central Tom Blair is. I think he was good but not the most noteworthy performance of it all.

Highly Recommended.

LAST CHANTS is a fine introduction to Jost's work, because, really, the films that follow aren't much different (at least, those with Tom Blair in them: SURE FIRE and THE BED YOU SLEEP IN.) Basically, they all follow a man who drives a pickup truck and has questionable morals, though Tom's character in BED isn't the same sort of character we see here and in SURE FIRE. But the men are usually failing in their business (a wacko get-rich-quick tourist scheme in SURE FIRE and a lumber company in BED) and later turn to violence. So the films seem formulaic at times, but it's Jost's exclusive formula, and it works. Here, though, there's a lack of the visual splendor that Jost injects in his later films, which is understandable. Anyway, LAST CHANTS is certainly worth a look, and it's a fine introduction into the work of this great, virtually unknown filmmaker.