Last Days (2005)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This movie is pretty bad, but not as bad as I thought it would be. Gus Van Sant is a guy I really hate because his movie EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES ruined one of the best books I ever read. (Read the book by Tom Robbins, it's amazing.)So I assumed going in that Van Sant meeting Kurt Cobain was going to be a typical Van Sant massacre, a Bambi Meets Godzilla orgy of artistic self-indulgence with Gus doing Kurt "his way." And I was right. But strangely, if you give this movie a chance it's not all that bad. The condescending, one-note story line, (helpless, fragile, beautiful boy dies slowly while drainers, users, liars, and cheats circle like vultures), is rendered poetic and even poignant by the sheer artistry of the camera work and the striking visual images. It's a great achievement, in a way. Gus Van Sant can convey despair better with a single shot of tall grass than another director could with ten pages of dialogue. You have to give him credit, in a way.Lost in all the dreamy doom and damnation, however, is the disturbing sense that Gus really doesn't know much about Kurt Cobain . . . other than that he was a beautiful boy who died. (And therefore the perfect object of desire?) Even though Michael Pitt (later to become a legend as Jimmy Darmody in HBO's BOARDWALK EMPIRE) gives an incredibly charismatic and nuanced performance, there's nothing here to suggest the dynamic energy of a charismatic and rebellious dynamo who changed the music world forever. Whatever music you hear is only to underline the despair, not the talent.Meanwhile, the outside world, (the squares, the straights, and always and above all the women) are dismissed as irrelevant and grotesque, monsters who just don't love our beautiful boy enough. This is sheer laziness. The cheap shots at Mormons and traveling salesmen would have been stale on a vaudeville stage one hundred years ago. But Van Sant can get away with it, because by God he's a real artist with a dreamy touch. All that art in the service of so much self-indulgence.

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.

Gus Van Sant is known for his particular way of directing, where he sets up the camera and lets the film role while his actors goes off, and it works for most of his films but not in "Last Days", the fictional take on the last days of legendary musician Kurt Cobain. The long drawn- out shots of the actors meandering in the frame became over-whelmingly boring, and mundane. Michael Pitt on the other hand was oddly fascinating as Blake. From his drugged up walk, to his whisper of a mumble, and long wavy hair, Michael Pitt captures the essences of Kurt Cobain and its frightening to see. The supporting cast adds nothing special. They felt like people you would meet at a party and then you would never see them again, and that is exactly how their characters played out. They would say their dialog and then exit the screen.There were a few shots in the film that I enjoyed and they were the ones where Blake was playing music. The first one was where Blake wonders around to a variety of different instruments as the camera pulls out into the woodsy exterior. The other scene was one of the final shots and its Blake playing guitar and singing a beautiful song.The film overall was not that great. Not Gus Van Sant's best directing job, there was too much down time, and his supporting cast was awful. If you were too see this film, see it for Michael Pitt, he was exceptional. I give "Last Days" a 6 out of 10.

Never before have i been angered so much by the reviews of other people that I have felt the need to add what I think.I have read time and time again how this movie is boring, or it is a blatant rip off of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Last day's is a fictional account of the last days of Kurt Cobains life set in a different location to where Kurt actually lived and died. And the fact that the main character is called Blake in inconsequential. What this movie actually is in my mind is a true piece of gonzo film making, Gus has taken a well known event and put his own spin on it, from his own imagination. Look at Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, that is a true story which has been woven with Hunter S. Thompsons imagination. Even the main character Raole Duke is clearly Hunter himself. Last Days is the same concept. I read someone say about Michael Pitt mumbling, well Kurt was well known for mumbling, so how is that bad acting?Pitt captures the spirit of Kurt Cobain perfectly not only does he understand the role completely but he delivers it so well that for an hour and a half I felt like i was watching a ghost. facially he may not be 100% Kurt, in fact he is slightly better looking but this isn't a look alike show. If you want to see the image of Kurt Cobain go and watch an interview with him or a documentary!There are a lot of hidden hints at things that maybe only Nirvana fans will understand. The tin Blake digs up I believe is meant to represent his stash of drugs. The drug use is implied. The hospital wrist band is a nod to the stint Kurt spent in rehab before escaping shortly before his death and the green house is an exact replica of the room above the garage at the Cobain house in which Kurt actually died.In short I believe that this movie is not just cast well it is a work of art. Not every one is going to like it, and clearly most people do not understand it.