Van Sant gives us a thinly veiled biopic of Kurt Cobain.
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If you were one of those people who found Kurt Cobain to be whiny and irritating, very likely you'll have no use for
Last Days
. If, however, you believe he was also an extremely gifted and miscategorized musician-or if you're merely interested in the manipulation of film narrative for its own sake-you'll find Gus Van Sant's newest film (very much in the tradition of
My Own Private Idaho
and
Elephant
) enthralling.
For the bulk of the film Van Sant simply holds a square space through which the film's self-destructing hero, Blake (
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
's Michael Pitt) barely manages to move. He's so diffident as to be all but inaudible, mumbling in response to infrequent questions and then wandering off-frame again. Blake has fled rehab and is hiding out in a decaying mansion vaguely occupied by the shreds of his former entourage, apparently preparing to die. And it doesn't seem that anyone particularly cares, though Kim Gordon has a brief appearance as an unusually compassionate record executive, or mother, or old friend-we never really know who she is, but she cares enough to chew him out ("What do you tell [your daughter]? Do you say, 'I'm sorry I'm a rock 'n' roll cliché?'"). You sense that everyone in Blake's life has either given up on him or extracted everything useful and beautiful, draining him to serve their careerism.
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Michael Pitt delivers a couple of elegiac, uncannily Cobainesque songs for which it's worth seeing the film, with dirty blond hair hanging in his eyes like a veil through which the world pierces him. As well, Pitt's kinetic abilities turn out to be prodigious; it's both lovely and strenuous to watch the wasted Blake unfurl himself tortuously, in eloquent gestures reminiscent of Butoh.
Last Days
may be more about depth of field than anything else; its compressed aspect ratio permits the director to dwell on inconsequetiae such as undergrowth moving hypnotically in a slight wind. Yet despite all Van Sant's disingenuous protestations that his movie is not about Kurt Cobain,
Last Days
is, when all is said and done, the portrait of a man's mind completing its final steps toward disintegration. At the 12th hour,
Last Days
seems to proffer a Christ-like interpretation; worthy is the lamb that was slain, etc. I hope that's too grandiose for Van Sant, and that he's putting forward something plainer instead: that Blake (like Cobain) was just a sweet kid, not particularly cosmopolitan, with very few defenses against those who sought to gain from his giftedness, until he had so little left to offer that, nearly translucent with weariness, he sought only a safe place in which to curl up and sleep.
