Last Days (2005)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Graham J

  
  Van Sant's meditation loosely based on the last days of Kurt Cobain is captivating though in the end there is not much there.

• Steven C

  
  Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" was bound to be be misunderstood from the get go. While the film is directly influenced by the death of Kurt Cobain, "Last Days" is a fictional story. It's also a film drenched in ennui, something that automatically turns off… More
  Gus Van Sant's "Last Days" was bound to be be misunderstood from the get go. While the film is directly influenced by the death of Kurt Cobain, "Last Days" is a fictional story. It's also a film drenched in ennui, something that automatically turns off nearly 3/4 of viewers. Films like this are also destined to be commercial failures. Fortunately for viewers who are willing to trust in the picture and let it's spell take hold, "Last Days" is an effecting little film. Michael Pitt as Blake is very interesting here. The physical tolls his depression (and subsequent and mostly implied drug addiction) inflicts on him are uncanny. Pitt also understands that depression is unique to each individual and he does not go out of his way to help the audience understand Blake's actions. We are merely voyeurs in this house (just like his friends), we don't need to understand the 'why?' Van Sant understands this as well, and confidently guides us through this tour of depressions deadly effects- playing with the time frame, only showing us certain character interactions etc. "Last Days" is a film very few people will have the patience to embrace due to it's structure, tone and theme- three things that contemporary audiences rarely care about to begin with. But trust me, there is plenty of good here.

• Lucas M

  
  Boring....Make the audience leave the room.

• Conner R

  
  The last entry in Gus Van Sant's Death Trilogy, this features a great parallel to the last days of Kurt Kobain and truly captures a human being. You spend over 90 minutes with a character and begin to really understand him. While there are large non-dialogue gaps, the imagery and… More
  The last entry in Gus Van Sant's Death Trilogy, this features a great parallel to the last days of Kurt Kobain and truly captures a human being. You spend over 90 minutes with a character and begin to really understand him. While there are large non-dialogue gaps, the imagery and physical acting keeps you completely memorized. I think it's probably the smartest way to go about making a movie about a beloved Rock Star, instead of fabricating events and relationships it is done in a very realistic way. You can believe the characters and the setting.

• Carlos M

  
  If Gus Van Sant's intention was to depict Kurt Cobain's last days as tedious and devoid of meaning as possible, his biggest presumption was to believe the viewers would all fall for this equally boring, self-indulgent hoax.

• Lady D

  
  The appeal for this film is that, although it?s not based on the actual events of the last few days of Cobain?s life, it was at least inspired by them and therefore seemed an interesting topic to me. Here?s where it all goes horribly wrong. The DVD cover describes the film as… More
  The appeal for this film is that, although it?s not based on the actual events of the last few days of Cobain?s life, it was at least inspired by them and therefore seemed an interesting topic to me. Here?s where it all goes horribly wrong. The DVD cover describes the film as ?Brilliant? and ?A Modern Masterpiece?, strangely I can?t identify with either of these descriptions. Unlike (I?m sure) many, I was utterly bored by the whole film, the whole thing was a huge disappointment to me. I can?t quite work out how this was an award winning film, honestly I think I would have had more fun watching paint dry. I definitely feel like I?m missing something here!!!

• Jens S

  
  Ever wanted to watch paint dry on film? That's how this "movie" feels. We follow around this drugged up musician, who is reminiscent of the late Kurt Cobain, without being entirely accurate as far as his last days are concerned. So we follow him run through the forest,… More
  Ever wanted to watch paint dry on film? That's how this "movie" feels. We follow around this drugged up musician, who is reminiscent of the late Kurt Cobain, without being entirely accurate as far as his last days are concerned. So we follow him run through the forest, take a piss in a lake, play his guitar, walk through the house with a gun and see his moronic friends do similarly mundane things. In the end he finally shoots himself. That's all there is to it. Whatever the point of this was, it is boring, pretentious and not even remotely interesting. Maybe a documentary showing the real scenes would have been, but this was just pointless. In fact I was fast forwarding through several scenes of this. Unfair, I know. Just like the 90 minutes this "movie" stole from me. Gus Van Sant, go back to making real films, please.

• Chris W

  
  This is a tough one to sit through. This is basically a non-narrative, minimalist (plot, dialogue) piece about a burned out, lonely, and mentally isolated rock musician named Blake, and the last few days he spends alive before dying in a very ambiguous manner. The film is only very… More
  This is a tough one to sit through. This is basically a non-narrative, minimalist (plot, dialogue) piece about a burned out, lonely, and mentally isolated rock musician named Blake, and the last few days he spends alive before dying in a very ambiguous manner. The film is only very loosely based upon/inspired by Kurt Cobain, and what his last few days very may have been like. The pacing of this film is extremely slow, and very deliberate, Having a slow pace makes the film seem far longer than 96 minutes and a chore to sit through, and while that is true, it is also a good thing. The audience is forced to sit through the wandering, dull, random and basically pointless activities like laying around, walking around, mumbling to oneself, and doing nothing really in particular. This is a tedious film that's not for everyone, but iit was urposefully made this way. It's an indie/arthouse film, not a Michael Bay blockbuster. It's hard to relate to Blake persobnality, but not his experience and the pain, loneliness, despairity he feels. I applaud Van Sant for being bold enough to make this kind of movie just for the sake of making it. For me, the best parts come from the technical end (directing, editing, acting, camera work and music). This is not a fun or pleasant experience, but it's one that should be experienced at least once.

• Michael G

  
  Watching this movie is like going on a date with a bipolar low-talker. Van Sant is either berating you with genius or showering you with bullshit. He pulls a lot of the same tricks he did with Elephant as far as events overlapping and seeing Asia Argento's bare ass (twice!) is… More
  Watching this movie is like going on a date with a bipolar low-talker. Van Sant is either berating you with genius or showering you with bullshit. He pulls a lot of the same tricks he did with Elephant as far as events overlapping and seeing Asia Argento's bare ass (twice!) is always a treat. I was very happy to see a movie with takes lasting longer than mere seconds, but whoever Van Sant's sound guy was should be kicked until they're dead. And Kim Gordon was a very nice surprise.

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic]Directed by Gus van Sant, "Last Days" is an agonizing, unintelligent, thoughtless, pointless movie about a rock star, Blake(Michael Pitt), a mumbling wreck, who is on the run from rehab(funny, I didn't notice any drugs) and returns to his… More
  [font=Century Gothic]Directed by Gus van Sant, "Last Days" is an agonizing, unintelligent, thoughtless, pointless movie about a rock star, Blake(Michael Pitt), a mumbling wreck, who is on the run from rehab(funny, I didn't notice any drugs) and returns to his chateau(which is a main stop for solicitors) where people he may or may not know are living there.(Yes, I know the back story but that does not excuse the sloppiness.) Apparently, the movie wants to show the life of a musician when he is not playing for an audience, but I much prefer the onstage, public performances. Ricky Jay playing a private investigator steals the movie by being able to talk in complete sentences. [/font]

• Burger S

  
  Kim Gordon's (Sonic Youth) appearance is this movies only saving grace.

• Mike T

  
  Devastating, haunting, beautiful, poetic, unforgettable... the more I watch this film, the more I adore it. It still gets under my skin and lingers with me for days after I watch it, and I have seen it over ten times. This quiet, unsettling character study demands a lot of the… More
  Devastating, haunting, beautiful, poetic, unforgettable... the more I watch this film, the more I adore it. It still gets under my skin and lingers with me for days after I watch it, and I have seen it over ten times. This quiet, unsettling character study demands a lot of the audience and, in some ways, is about as subtle as films get. Having said that, I think it is obvious that none of the directorial decisions are made without clear intent. Van Sant's abstract, minimalist approach to the story is disarming at first but ultimately effective. It provides us with a depiction of silent degradation as opposed to a forcefully emotional presentation. The stylistic nature works beautifully as an illustration of loneliness, but it is Michael Pitt's chillingly convincing work on the focal character that brings it all together so well. This is one of his finest performances; nuanced, complex and textured. It is rare that a story can say so much without directly spelling anything out. I think this is one of the saddest, most expertly engineered studies of depression I have seen.

• Adam M

  
  Interesting look at the final days of a rock star, who is based on Kurt Cobain. Blake is a very quiet, seemingly strange man, little do people know whats going on in his head, even the people around him. Whether this is what Kurt Cobain was exactly like during his final days is… More
  Interesting look at the final days of a rock star, who is based on Kurt Cobain. Blake is a very quiet, seemingly strange man, little do people know whats going on in his head, even the people around him. Whether this is what Kurt Cobain was exactly like during his final days is unknown but Blakes demise mirror's Cobain's. There's very little dialogue and like Gus Van Sant's other films, this is more like a character study of a lost and lonely person who just happened to be the world's biggest rock star. It's a bit random and you'll either get it or not but it's still an interesting film, worth a look.

• Angela A

  
  This was definitely a mood piece. There's hardly any dialogue with loads of great music and imagery. Just grab a brew and let the movie wash over you, getting you right into the depressive, eccentric mood that it brings.

• Moe E

  
  Allegedly, the unauthorized depiction of the "Last Days" of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. If this is true, all I can say is what a waste...of 97 minutes of my life! Garbage...

• Janice :

  
  Wow. Michael Pitt gives an excellent performance. EXCELLENT. And it's also a great tribute to Kurt Cobain whom I hold deeply in my heart. There are vitually no real dialogue that lasts over 4 minutes. It's mainly a series of mumbling and unintelligible words from Blake… More
  Wow. Michael Pitt gives an excellent performance. EXCELLENT. And it's also a great tribute to Kurt Cobain whom I hold deeply in my heart. There are vitually no real dialogue that lasts over 4 minutes. It's mainly a series of mumbling and unintelligible words from Blake (which ultimately emphasize Blake's condition). But then again, I loved sitting back and watching Blake slowly evolve, doing strange things that foreshadowed his eventual death. Okay I also won't hide the fact that it's quite lengthy but you can last 1h37 minutes, trust me (especially if you've seen The Aura or LOTR or some other lengthy movie), because ultimately we all await the end with never-ending patience. And even if the ending is quite mediocre, it was subjective; hence I could make of it what I thought (based solely on what I saw and the facts). And before I go, if ever you rent this, keep a close watch (more like ear) to the sounds. Because even if there's no concrete dialogue, the sounds are sharp and exact. A wooden door opening, a fire crackling, a river flowing... I strongly recommend to fans of KC, drama and unconventional films. Probably a cult classic.

• Eduardo C

  
  Fantastic take on the final days of a man in the last throes of addiction. Michael Pitt makes an excelent Kurt Cobain stand-in and it is truly harrowing watching how far gone he is. His bandmates and his manager exploits him, his friends try to save him, a man tries to convince him to… More
  Fantastic take on the final days of a man in the last throes of addiction. Michael Pitt makes an excelent Kurt Cobain stand-in and it is truly harrowing watching how far gone he is. His bandmates and his manager exploits him, his friends try to save him, a man tries to convince him to subscribe to the yellow pages and all are met with the same, blank, mumbling, wall. It is clear that, by this point, he has already given up. The scene where he picks up a guitar and plays (Death to Birth, a song by Pagoda, Michael Pitt's band) is incredibly moving and crucial to the film: it serves both to remind the audience of how talented this man truly is and as his swan song, his farewell. Some scenes don't fully work, and we spend either too little time with Blake's friends or too much (as they are not developped at all) but the film is nonetheless a desolate, deppressing and organic work of art. Cobain fans might bitch about some of the inaccuracies (as if it matters, this is Blake after all) but this is quite a moving experience.

Read all 17 featured audience ratings