I was one of the fortunate handful to have had a chance to catch this provocative yet engaging film very shortly after its final cut about a year ago -- as of this writing -- and I can safely say the visceral body-shuddering fly-on-the-wall experience of listening to the last repentant (some unrepentant) ponderous reflections of various inmates on Death Row still remains with me to this day...
The quorum of directors who assisted on this unique cross-continental collaborative mash- up did a truly standout job with their particular segments, but the real mastery of this film comes from the conceptual head of the pyramid, Orla Wolf, who assembled the disparate ingredients in this provocative goulash into a cohesive narrative and an even more in-your- face artistic statement.
That's right: in-your-face!
LAST STATEMENT is art expressly designed to cause you to squirm in your plush padded chair. This is art which will prod you into questioning your very freedom and those cherished vaunted values about our individual liberties which we all hold dear.
Do *you*, friend, laud the freedom you currently possess?
Do you seize it mightily in order to serve yours -- and society's -- best interests?
Or is it an unbridled over-exuberant me-first all-me-and-only-me liberty run amok, destroying you and others in its path. Wreaking havoc on our order, our system, our square...
These are some of the question you will ask yourself as you finish your view, because those were just some of things that occurred to me.
If LAST STATEMENT is the future of guerrilla indie filmmaking -- where artist-director- conceptualists from -- literally -- around the planet band together as sisters and brothers in the making of a narrative one-piece, then count me in!
With the disintegrative forces so very potentially high on a project of this internationalist collaborative nature -- when the "pull apart" looms so threateningly stronger over the "join together" on something of this magnitude -- and to then pull it off and kick butt at the end...that deserves more than a plain vanilla kudo.
Very well done, gang. Marvellously well done.
