Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" inspired by a hazy Cobain
How you react to "Last Days," Gus Van Sant's minimalist account of a despondent musician's final days, depends greatly on how willing you are to fill in the blanks. The story, told with little dialogue or action, feels like an outline awaiting shading and detail.
The film, which recently closed the Seattle International Film Festival, is inspired by the last days of Kurt Cobain, and the parallels are obvious. Skinny, pale Michael Pitt bears a strong resemblance to Cobain, and one of the final shots is a startling re-creation of the famous Seattle Times photo of Cobain's dead body, glimpsed through a window.
Pitt's character endlessly wanders the woods near his home, talks to a door-to-door salesman, makes macaroni and cheese (the nasty, orange-powder kind) and stares into space; he's clearly miserable and isolated, and we don't know why. Perhaps, if we fill in our own knowledge of Cobain's life, we'd know why, but the movie skips this.
Van Sant's previous film, "Elephant," similarly used a vague, elliptical storytelling style to re-create a real-life drama (in that case, the Columbine high-school shootings), but that film had an intricate plotline and the kind of vivid detail that made it seem more like a documentary — one from which you couldn't look away.
"Last Days," by contrast, has little to hold on to. A few moments are lovely, particularly a late shot in which Blake (the Cobain figure) magically transcends his body, but mostly the film just feels like waiting — for something to happen, for a reason to care.
"Last Days," with Michael Pitt, Lukas Haas, Asia Argento, Scott Green, Nicole Vicius, Ricky Jay. Written and directed by Gus Van Sant. 95 minutes. Rated R for language and some sexual content. Neptune, Meridian.