flimflamfilms

I'd seen some negative reviews of this film before I watched it but it's always hard to know whether they're written by people who just didn't get the film or whether they were written by people who are open to something very different who just didn't think the director succeeded in producing something of value.

Terrence Malick is indeed trying to take his audience in a different direction. He has turned away from the idea of telling a story to focus on the intangible emotional states of his characters, but I don't think many viewers will be able to relate very well to a character who is searching for meaning within an extremely privileged Hollywood social sphere, nor do I think we have much of an opportunity to connect to the film emotionally when it's edited like a music video. The film shifts wildly from one subject to another, the camera continuously in motion, as we tune in and out of incomplete conversations. Laid on top of the soundtrack throughout is slow, ponderous narration from multiple characters, often on subjects that have no immediate relationship to what is on screen at the time.

It is hard to sit through to the end. I did, though I caught myself daydreaming about other things on several occasions. It's hard to pay attention to something that seems to be making so little effort to hold it, but I was hoping it would go somewhere interesting. Surely the directer of a masterpiece like The Thin Red Line would pull something out of his sleeve to weave the chaos together, but then it ended.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you which group of reviewers I'm in. I might be the kind who just didn't get it or who aren't open to what Malick was trying to do, but I was thoroughly bored by it. I appreciate that he is trying something different, and this film is that, but I don't feel like I got anything out of it.

One group who might appreciate this film though is modern architects who put a lot of glass in their buildings. There is a lot of that.

Kurt Cobain and Nirvana evidently meant different things to different people, but what drew many of us to the music was the fact that he wasn't promoting himself like the spandex gods of rock who dominated at the time. Instead, here was this self-deprecating guy, who hid behind his locks, and who actually seemed to mean it for once. He was also giving a voice to a set of frustrations that none of us had really been able to articulate, and doing it without any pretence of being constructive. He was just screaming at the sky, and it felt good.

But there were also people who copied his hairstyle, the way he dressed and the particular kind of overdrive distortion he favoured on the guitar. This kind of fan probably just wanted to hop on board with something popular, but as far as I was concerned, they knew not what it meant. Never mind.

You could say that Last Days is about Kurt Cobain, but you could also say that Gus Van Sant's treatment of events is a bit like Tarantino's treatment of WW2 in Inglorious Basterds. It's not really how it happened, but it isn't through carelessness on the part of the filmmaker but by deliberate choice. Last Days is Gus Van Sant's impression of Kurt and although it's different from mine in various ways, I found it interesting to experience him from another perspective. I don't resent it in the way that I resent people who think Nirvana was about flannel shirts. I liked it.

I suspect that a bit of the Kurt-esque character in Last Days might actually be River Phoenix in disguise though. Kurt died less than six months after River and Gus Van Sant of course knew River personally from working with him on My Own Private Idaho. That might explain something about Van Sant's unique perspective on Kurt.