"Last Days"

35MM, COLOUR, DOLBY DIGITAL, 97 MINUTES, USA, ENGLISH / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT/EDITOR: GUS VAN SANT / CINEMATOGRAPHER: HARRIS SAVIDES / PRODUCTION CO: HBO FILMS, PICTUREHOUSE, PIE FILMS INC. / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: RIALTO FILMS, 2005

Last Days is the concluding chapter of Gus Van Sant’s ‘death trilogy’ and a sensuous, contemplative study of Blake, a reclusive rock star styled on the late Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in 1994. Blake (Michael Pitt) spends his last days in an exhausted, drug-induced malaise, muttering and stumbling around a remote mansion and its surrounding forests and evading contact with the outside world and his entourage of friends. Van Sant shows restraint, offering little insights or reasons for Blake’s eventual suicide; Blake seemingly already embodies a version of the living-dead.