Last Days (2005)

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Directed by Gus Van Sant.

Starring Asia Argento, Scott Patrick Green, Lukas Haas, Michael Pitt, Nicole Vicius.

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Filmmaker Gus Van Sant wrote and directed this meditation on stardom and its costs, inspired in part by the life and death of rock musician Kurt Cobain. Blake (Michael Pitt) is the leader of an influential alternative rock band who has unexpectedly won a large degree of fame and fortune. Depressed and unsure of what to do with himself or his success, Blake wanders about the run-down mansion he calls home and the visits the woods nearby. While a handful of friends live with Blake, he prefers to avoid them, as they often seem more interested in money or help with their music than in his friendship; meanwhile, Blake is also confronted by a handful of fans, his agent, and a gentleman who sells advertising space in a telephone directory and has no idea who Blake is. As Blake goes through the motions of his day, he tries to decide what he should do next, and what might finally free him from his ennui. Shot and edited in the same languid, low-key manner as his films Elephant and Gerry, Last Days also stars Lukas Haas, Asia Argento, Scott Green, Ricky Jay, and Harmony Korine. Kim Gordon of the band Sonic Youth also appears in the film, while her husband and bandmate Thurston Moore was a consultant for the musical score; both were friends of Kurt Cobain and toured in tandem with Nirvana on several occasions. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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Reviews and discussions

Cheung Comes Clean
by solafekxela in solafekxela Blog

is neutral about it.

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"Veteran director Olivier Assayas tackles the popular but uncomfortable topic of drugs and music in Clean. Maggie Cheung is a musician suffering through a drug addiction, with the memory of her late husband, Lee, who overdosed, looming over her. Both are musicians who share a son, who is staying with Lee’s parents (Nick Nolte and Martha Henry). The film proceeds to follow Emily’s attempt to change her life, kick her habit, and become a successful musician. Her journey is always compelling, as she gets sidetracked by past loves, the need to reinitiate a relationship with Jay, her son, and, obviously, her drug addiction. Assayas doesn’t waste any time with dull exposition, only establishing Emily’s relationship with Lee and their life that revolves around music. When she leaves Lee alone for the night, a pouring rain in the morning signals not only her isolation, but the cleansing that her husband’s death will allow. Though the moment lacks some emo ... " [More]

"Keep your eyes open and y ...
by BigJeffLebowski in BigJeffLebowski Blog

hasn't rated it.

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"As far as sex symbols go, few are willing to plumb the depths of depravity as fully and as frequently as Asia Argento. This is significant not only in that it opens her to a world of film roles at which other actress would likely scoff, but also because her magnetism infuses even her most deplorable characters with an intrinsic, unquantifiable duende that makes other characters’ attractions to them a little more explicable. No film I’ve seen of hers demonstrates this more definitively than The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, which she also co-wrote and directed from the faux autobiographical works of JT LeRoy. It is important that the film’s -- and the stories’ -- lack of authenticity be addressed in any critical assessment of the work. Argento begins her film with a close-up of what is presumably her personal copy of “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,” complete with marginalia and annotations. The audience is immediately aw ... " [More]

Re: The Heart is Deceitful Abov ...
by BigJeffLebowski in Spout Mavens

hasn't rated it.

"As far as sex symbols go, few are willing to plumb the depths of depravity as fully and as frequently as Asia Argento. This is significant not only in that it opens her to a world of film roles at which other actress would likely scoff, but also because her magnetism infuses even her most deplorable characters with an intrinsic, unquantifiable duende that makes other characters’ attractions to them a little more explicable. No film I’ve seen of hers demonstrates this more definitively than The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, which she also co-wrote and directed from the faux autobiographical works of JT LeRoy. It is important that the film’s -- and the stories’ -- lack of authenticity be addressed in any critical assessment of the work. Argento begins her film with a close-up of what is presumably her personal copy of “The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,” complete with marginalia and annotations. The audience is immediately awar ... " [More]

Clip of The Day: Jem Cohen + Pa ...
by SpoutBlog in SpoutBlog on spout.com

hasn't rated it.

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"Jem Cohen won the "Someone to Watch" Independent Spirit Award for his feature film Chain last year, but many of us have been "watching" his collaborations with bands like Fugazi for quite awhile. Cohen's work usually falls somewhere in the cracks between personal documentary and experimental narrative. Often shot handheld on low-gauge film, they're like punk-rock home movies, always intimate (even when set largely in cold/industrial spaces, as with Chain), but never cloying sentimental. Cohen's latest work is the above music video, for Patti Smith's banjo-fied cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (direct link here, via Rex at Fimoculous). The clip oozes Cohen's signature style, insofar as it's a grainy, black-and-white portrait of a space and in its inhabitants. But with a bedraggled, be-flanneled Smith at its center, it could also be placed in the same micro-genre as Gus Van Sant's Last Days -- both seem to be muted elegies to a kind of myth of artistic insularity repres ... " [More]

Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

is neutral about it.

Gus Van Sant's well-made Last Days has one insurmountable fault: it feels entirely unnecessary. The main problem is that the director has chosen to evoke the memory of Kurt Cobain so directly that it will be the only way for the vast majority of viewers to approach the film. While Michael Pitt offers a sparse, mumbling performance that captures the depression of the main character, the director is unable to make the character particularly meaningful. In Van Sant's previous film, the award-winning Elephant, he took a real-life event (the Columbine shootings) and set up a fictional account of the incident that would allow people to talk about why it happened. The motivations of school-shooters are rarely fully understood, but Cobain made his troubled inner life crystal clear in the songs he created in the year before his death. Pitt wrote two songs that he performs in the film. They are well done and work both as pieces of music and as glimpses inside the character's soul, but "All Apologies" and "I Hate Myself and Want to Die," did the same things and did them much more memorably. Taken back to back, those songs accomplish everything this film wants to and much more. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Tags: beautiful , day , long , Pretentious , slow
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