A review of Gus Van Sant’s latest film
(First published at Exzibit.net on 08 September 2005)
Normally, films about heroes either closely follow their lives or abandon the facts in favour of recreation of the effect left by their image. In any case, the result is either deification of the hero, or his defamation, both acts being deeply rooted in the personal judgement of film’s author.
This is not what Gus Van Sant planned to do for his latest film, Last Days. The main protagonist is and is not the late Kurt Cobain: the disclaimer at the beginning of the titles says that the film was “loosely” inspired by the singer, but otherwise is a fictional story; the very last line of the titles reads ‘In Memory of Kurt Cobain’. Last Days, however, is far from being apologetic or inquisitive. Van Sant is almost indifferent to when, how and why Cobain died, in the sense that he doesn’t accuse anyone, yet directs Michael Pitt in the same pose as Cobain was found, adding no more detail. More than by a person, he is captivated by the theme of the death of a talent, and Cobain was the best example, as far as Van Sant was concerned.
The film opens with Blake pushing through the autumnal forest towards the river waterfall, where he goes for a short swim. Back to his house, as beautiful a wreck as Blake himself, he makes a breakfast and then slips into a black drag, pulls a rifle out of nowhere and wanders around the house as a haunting phantom. In fact, he is like the Canterville Ghost: his steps and sounds and his yearning for escape are ignored by people who are too preoccupied with their own pettiness to believe in a soul. The freedom and peace that he craves for are postponed with every new phone call, or unwanted visit, or selfish request. The trauma is worsened by a sense of guilt that his record executive doesn’t hesitate to maintain. He is a rock-n-roll cliché, a drugged-to-unconsciousness icon. How did it happen? Was he weak? Or did his talent push him into this abyss? There is never an explanation; instead, Van Sant lets us listen to Blake’s swan song, instilled with angst and plea for retreat. After that Blake goes to the greenhouse in the night. We last see him looking up at something; his face is lit up, and for the first time he appears composed. Next morning a gardener finds a body and witnesses Blake’s soul climbing up the window frame. Now he is finally walking on his ‘stairway to heaven’, and the medieval choir rapturously sings ‘Victor! Victor!’, announcing his complete break-off from the unbearable mundane hell.
For Michael Pitt, who starred in Bertolucci’s Dreamers (Italy, 2003), Last Days is the second film he made with Van Sant (another is Finding Forrester (US, 2001)). He is certainly the perfect cast, his slender figure and a mauve of blonde hair shaping the vulnerable lost character of Blake under strict Van Sant’s direction. But the peak of his performance comes with Blake’s last song that Pitt wrote himself, which is a stunning piece of acoustic music. With this song Van Sant drew a thick line between Blake and Cobain, thus escaping the trap of conventionality and resemblance.
As a meditation on life, youth and death, Last Days follows both technically and stylistically two previous films by Van Sant that embraced the same topic, Gerry (2002) and Elephant (2003). Once again Van Sant attempts to offer his view of a well known story. Gerry had a local incident at heart, while Elephant, which earned him the Palme d’Or at Cannes, was a harrowing reconstruction of the Columbine tragedy. Last Days (also nominated at the Cannes Festival this year) is different, however, because it lacks any kind of relation on the part of director. In Elephant, for instance, the lingering camerawork together with the melancholic autumnal landscape and beautiful Beethoven’s music conveyed an attempt and yet inability to stop the time and to prevent the extinction of youth. Last Days, on the contrary, praises death as the only exit in the given circumstances. It also succeeds in keeping the distance between the hero (Cobain), the crew (led by Van Sant), the protagonist (Blake), and the viewer. It is a totally detached film, as a philosophical reflection should be.
Van Sant himself denies the existence of any kind of plan behind the production of Gerry, Elephant and Last Days, explaining the similarity between the films by his deep interest in the relation between youth and death. He is by no means the only one who shows continuous fascination with one particular topic. Roman Polanski, for instance, is well known for his on-going interest in the unfitting freaks (The Tenant, Repulsion) or in the diabolism and black magic (Rosemary’s Baby, The Ninth’s Gate). Nonetheless, film critics did not hesitate to call all three of Gus Van Sant’s films a trilogy, of which Last Days is supposedly the last chapter. In the interview to Sight&Sound Van Sant carefully dismissed this point, so with any luck the true peak of his explorations in this field still lies ahead.
Last Days certainly sets an example of a biopic of an icon. And that Kurt Cobain was an icon is indubitable. From his emerge as a regional American rock star to his death which to this day wears a veil of mystery, he has been an example of the ‘live quick, die young’ principle on the rock scene. His image was hence romanticised, even if he wasn’t romantic by himself. And the real achievement of Van Sant is in that he successfully transmitted this romanticised vision of a dying talent to the screen, without appearing weepy or judgemental. By making religious symbolism and the references to Wilde oblique, as well as missing out many of the detail that could have spoilt his work, he managed to alienate his protagonist from Cobain to such extent that the viewer is lured into Van Sant’s ponderings on why young talents sometimes never get old, rather than wonders however exactly Cobain had died.
Last Days is hence an elegy, as poetic as many other Van Sant’s films, and certainly as arresting in the use of music. The audacity to illustrate the life of a rock star with the medieval French choral piece by Jancquin that features both at the beginning and at the end of the film singles out Van Sant for his obvious view that the best crescendos of the rock music are no more than repercussions of the well-forgotten chorales and mannerist squirms of the early operas. As an example, one of Queen’s best songs was Bohemian Rhapsody that brilliantly imitated the Baroque choir. The choice also indicates that in Van Sant’s mind the tunes of Cobain/Blake were in their own right heirs to the beginnings of the classical music.
The cinematography is impressive, although the reverses that show the same scene from two points of view are not as effective as they are in Elephant, and sometimes even seem to be an excess. Yet Van Sant doesn’t use these as much as in Elephant, and that again takes us back to the question of how Last Days is connected to the other two films. The more one thinks of this question, the more obvious it becomes that the untimely death is not the most important topic of any of the films. By choosing the featured choir La Guerre (The War), Van Sant accentuated death as the only solution for Blake. Yet death, no matter how destructive or untimely, is caused by a spiritual solitude of the protagonist, and by the others’ inability or unwillingness to see any reason behind the alienation.
This is the topic that in effect is also central in both Gerry and Elephant. Two deserted men, a deserted schoolboy, and a deserted artist all fell victims to the destructive power of human indifference and pettiness. Those fascinated with Cobain’s death will be disappointed: Van Sant did not even verbalise the last thoughts and passions of his protagonist. Instead, he carefully implies that milieu is always stronger than any of its members, and their achievements or failures are just as much down to this milieu, as to their spiritual strength. And when the choir proclaims the deceased a ‘Victor!’ it is just as truthful as it is deeply, unbearably ironic.
