Details
Movie Description
Inspired by the true story of Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of the popular Seattle-based rock band Nirvana who committed suicide in 1994, director Gus Van Sant (ELEPHANT) presents this meditative journey through the last days in the life of fictional musician Blake (Michael Pitt). In a bewildered state of drug withdrawal, Blake stumbles through deep woods groaning and mumbling quietly. His words are only occasionally audible, and even less occasionally coherent. Thus, the focus is on Blake's tortured, slow-motion movements and his tangle of chin-length blond hair, which hangs like a mask over his face. Reaching a clearing, Blake enters a dilapidated mansion where he lives with four similarly confused young rockers. A string of foggy events follows in partially chronological order. Scenes overlap, allowing for minor details to be added later. This style hints at the insignificance of time--and of everything--from Blake's perspective.
Avoiding human contact, taking long walks, playing music, and hiding in the greenhouse, Blake nears his inevitable end. He digs up a parcel from the backyard, smokes a cigarette and painstakingly pours a bowl of Cocoa Krispies, changes into a black evening gown and grabs a rifle, answers the phone and says nothing when a voice asks him about an upcoming tour. Blake then descends into a bizarre, barely conscious state during which people come and go from the house. But none of it seems to register, as he is already lost. LAST DAYS finds melancholic beauty in green trees reflecting in window panes, and the sound of rippling lake water echoing the ambient noise in Blake's head; and Pitt shows chameleon expertise in his mutely charismatic depiction of the unreachable Blake, whose resemblance to Cobain is both haunting and magical.
Industry Reviews
"In LAST DAYS, the writer-director Gus Van Sant draws us into the illusion that we're seeing the druggy, blithering, zoned-out final days of a rock star very much like -- no, exactly like -- Kurt Cobain."
Entertainment Weekly - Owen Glieberman (07/29/2005)
"[A] mesmerizing dream of a film....One of this year's indisputably great films."
New York Times - Manohla Dargis (07/22/2005)
"[U]ndeniably hypnotic..."
Rolling Stone - Peter Travers (08/11/2005)
"LAST DAYS is a subversive piece of filmmaking....It'll stick in your head for a long while to come. Which is the point."
Uncut - Michael Bonner (09/01/2005)
"[C]inematographer Harris Savides is behind the camera, finding beautiful still-life tableaux in Blake's crumbling mansion."
Sight and Sound - Stephen Dalton (09/01/2005)
"Pitt bears a spooky resemblance to Cobain and captures some of his intense originality in demeanor....[The film] has a hypnotic quality."
USA Today - Claudia Puig (07/22/2005)
"Occasionally sublime in its vivid long-take hypnotics and sonic soundscapes."
Premiere - Aaron Hillis (11/01/2005)
Ranked #6 in Uncut's Best Films Of 2005 -- "A bleak but brilliant study of the isolating nature of fame."
Uncut - Uncut Staff (01/01/2006)
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