What
the hell is going on with Gus Van Sant? It’s like he went on some sort of
mushroom trip and returned convinced that the future of American cinema lied in
the filming of people walking, walking aimlessly, sometimes muttering while they
walk or talking to others while they walk, but the overriding narrative theme
or his last three films has been the act of walking. In Gerry two people walked,
walked some more - yelled at each other, maybe climbed a little bit and then commenced
walking again. In Elephant, the walking was somewhat more purposeful - these were
student walking, often with definable destinations, but walking nonetheless. Lots
of walking.
Now
comes Last Days, a story about walking, although this walking might be more accurately
described as aimless wandering, but Michael Pitt (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) walks.
Through the woods, down to the river, pausing briefly to wonder at the amazing
nature of an occasional twig, but then right back to walking. Most of the time
we see him walking from a distance, peaking through a bush at him walking, He
even walks up to a house in the country. He walks right in, then walks around
looking for something to eat, sometimes squatting long enough to eat, then right
back to walking.
As
you may know the film is supposed to be loosely representative of Kurt Cobain’s
final days of walking, but other than a few minutes where he sits long enough
to play the guitar, while howling in some sort of howling language. He walks.
Walks the grounds of the big house and then out to the small guest house we recognize
as resembling the place where the real Kurt Cobain took his life. There are other
people in the film, mostly a bunch of druggy looking grungers who hang around,
drink beer, have some sex and pay little if no attention to this guy walking around
in his boxers. Nor does Pitt seem in the least bit interested in interacting with
these people, after all they’d only take time away from his walking.
Van
Sant even finds time to take a poke at a couple Mormon missionaries, for no apparent
reason, perhaps because they prefer to ride ten speeds in favor of walking. Lucas
Haas is recognizable as one of the people squatting in the house, but he certainly
doesn’t offer any light as to what we’re supposed to make of this film.
He seems not to like Pitt, but we have no idea why, maybe he drank the last of
the milk?
I hate
to say that I was in kind of a hurry for the walking man to grab the shotgun,
but since I knew it was coming and there’s nothing I can do about it, I figured
why not take me out of my misery. I’m exhausted from all this walking. The
sad thing is there have been times in my life when I’ve been in those walking
shoes, so I could relate to it, but still I didn’t like this film in the
least. Waste of time. Picking at Cobain’s bones.
