Last Days

Saw Last Days the other day. Can't say I was very impressed with it. It's based on what Gus van Sant thinks happened to Kurt Cobain when he went missing for that week before his body was found in his greenhouse. The movie was pretty much all shots of the main character mumbling to himself, stumbling through the woods or shuffling around his house and talking to random salespeople who would come to the door looking very obviously high on drugs, but without the drug consumption ever being shown.

It might have been interesting either to someone who didn't know very much about Kurt Cobain's less-than-glamourous rock star life, someone who didn't alread know that he pretty much lived like a drug addict.

On the other hand, someone who perhaps has read a couple of biographies of Cobain and bought the boxed set and was the right age to have a rock star necrophilic obsession with Cobain in their teen years and could name every junkie or private detective's real-life equivalent and know their backgrounds and how they became involved with Cobain could enjoy the film on the level of being able to appreciate the level of detail in it. Like knowing that Kurt could only cook Kraft Dinner so that's all he would ever eat for long stretches. But for me there was nothing in the film that I didn't already know or suspect, yet I had no idea about any of the throwaway details, and what remained was a boring series of achingly mundaine dialogs and uninspiring shots of someone crawling through the Pacific Northwest woods. I found myself wondering when it would end about halfway through the film.

The supposed hilight of the movie, when the Kurt Cobain character, Blake sings a song became the centre of the movie mainly because it was surrounded by so much utter dullness that the least bit of audio stimulation was enough to grab my weary attention and keep it. (I also found myself really getting into the Boyz II Men music video that was on Blake's TV a couple of times, an interesting nod to the times to be sure.) The song itself was a little too melodic to be considered a faithful impersonation of a Nirvana song. Its closest comparison would be something like Pennyroyal Tea from the Unplugged album. The vocals were also needlessly erratic. Kurt actually wanted to sing his lyrics, not blurt them out like a lazy yet spazmatic mental patient.

The performance was very good, but nothing you wouldn't learn in acting school. Michael Pitt had Kurt Cobain's movements and mannerisms copied very accurately, his stares and fidgetiness, everything you might remember from seeing way too much archive footage on Much Music back in 1994. Nothing award-winning, but it could certainly be a bullet-point in a resume.

I'd say for most people you won't really get much out of this. It's just Mr. van Sant admiring himself in the mirror again.
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