Gus Van Sant's Last Days: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

9/06/2007 Posted by Admin

A director, very much alive

(Originally published 2005)

Don’t send out the condolences just yet.

The movie isn’t about the director's death--if anything, it proves that Van Sant is very much alive. Instead, it’s slyly about the events leading up to Kurt Cobain's death.

Though the movie never says that Michael Pitt’s Blake, a disturbed rock star, is Cobain, it’s obvious what Van Sant is up to here.

The movie exists in a haze, with time as fractured as Blake himself. Long stretches seem pointless, which is the point; Van Sant wants you to feel his character’s isolation and so he isolates us from him, him from us. Tricky business.

This is not a movie for the masses, who might be put off by how aloof and meandering it is, or perhaps even for fans of Cobain, who likely would prefer more insight into the final days leading to his death. Instead, this is an experimental movie, not wholly successful, that reaches for its own nirvana--something new within the art of moviemaking.

Grade: B-

Buy the movie from Amazon: Last Days (2 Disc Special Edition)