Recent Reviews for Last Life in the Universe
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MCT:June 21, 2008Not Interested
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MCT:April 17, 2008
not interested
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MCT:March 8, 2008"Many books say "death is relaxing". Did you know that? No need to follow the latest trends. No need to keep pace
with the rest of the world. No more e-mail. No more telephone. It'll be like taking a nap... Before waking up refreshed and ready to begin your next life. That's what they say."
From David Lean's Brief Encounter to Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris to Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love, the chance meeting of strangers and the subsequent relationship they develop within a limited timeframe has long served as a fruitful filmic subject. There's something inherently tragic about the idea of romance cut short by the powers of fate, whether in the form of death, insuperable social taboo, or simply a planned relocation, as in the case of Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang's terrific fourth feature, Last Life in the Universe.
One of the first images we see in the film is a pile of books scattered across the floor, with a slipper on top. As the camera slowly inclines upward, we see a man's feet, with one slipper on, and then his legs hanging above the books. "My name is Kenji", a voice says over the soundtrack, "This could be me three hours from now. Why do I want to kill myself?" he muses, "I don't know. I wouldn't kill myself for the same reasons as other suicidal people. Money problems. Broken heart. Hopelessness. No, not me".
This is clearly a fantasy sequence, complete with two acquaintances of Kenji's entering the room and one fainting at the sight of his lifeless body hanging from the ceiling. But a moment later, we see the real-life Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) standing atop a neatly stacked pile of books with a noose around his neck. He's about to kill himself when he's interrupted by the doorbell. It's his gangster brother, who laughs upon noticing that Kenji was about to attempt suicide, an apparently routine recurrence. He hands Kenji a six-pack of Heineken, which Kenji immediately stocks, labels-forward, in his fridge, a character gesture that matches the clean order of his austerely decorated apartment (dozens of stacks of books and DVDs, and not much else line the walls of Kenji's living quarters).
This scene is an early example of Ratanaruang's rather mordant sense of deadpan humor. Perhaps the funniest and certainly one of the most brilliant comes a little later, when one character says to another that he watches too many yakuza films just before Ratanaruang, with a quick meta wink, cuts abruptly to a poster of Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer, featuring Asano's image; Miike himself even turns up in the film, in a small part as a yakuza boss.
Kenji works as a librarian at a Japanese cultural center in Bangkok. He has attempted to shut himself off from the chaos of the outside world, but things soon spiral out of control when his brother is killed while visiting his apartment and - out of self-defense, not revenge - Kenji shoots the man who's just murdered his brother. He leaves his apartment as it's beginning to stink from the rot of the two corpses, and is about to jump off a highway bridge, when, once again, his suicide attempt is interrupted - this time by a traffic accident. Following the accident, Kenji strikes up a sort-of-relationship with Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak), the sister of the young girl whose sudden, gruesome and masterfully shot death he witnessed just as he was about to take his own life.
It's obvious, at once, that Noi is Kenji's polar opposite. She's beautiful, but moody and mercurial, and her place is an authentic pig-house, cluttered and surely infested with god-knows-what, dirty dishes piled about a foot above the sink. Nevertheless, Kenji takes it up on himself to move in with her, and, somewhat reluctantly, Noi allows him to stay - much to her abusive boyfriend's responsibility. She's teaching herself Japanese as she plans soon (as in, next Monday) on moving to Osaka, but hasn't mastered the language to the point where she can speak fluently with Kenji, who himself struggles with Thai. So, they converse mostly in broken English as their relationship, marked by a mutual sense of isolation and subtle sparks of romance, gradually takes shape.
Writer-director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang is a self-admitted fan of filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki, and he shares some of their preoccupations, such as wryly downplaying the language differences of his characters and showing more interest in household detail than any drama going on outside. The film also reminds me of Tsai Ming-Liang's What Time Is It There?, with its parallels, connections, and criss-crossing cultures. Some critics have also compared the film to Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, in which a mismatched pair of travellers find each other in a cloud of melancholy. There's truth and untruth about that. Lost in Translation uncovers little bits of truth about people, and Coppola lets her characters - and her story - drift delicately through indistinct thoughts and honest emotions. Ratanaruang doesn't, he orchestrates his characters to attract or repel each other like magnets, adjusting the angles to arrive at an optimally clever conclusion.
Visually speaking, Last Life in the Universe is a little piece of perfection. Ratanaruang and master cinematographer Christopher Doyle (Wong Kar-wai's longtime DP of choice and one of the finest working in cinema today) partner together to supply this offbeat love story with an appropriately dreamy visual design. (Both would work together again in Invisible Waves). If Doyle's photography, gorgeous as always, inadvertently calls to mind his past work on films like Wong's Happy Together and Chungking Express and Chen Kaige's Temptress Moon in its expressive use of light and spatial distance, Ratanaruang's haunting rhythms and idiosyncratic stylistic sense make Last Life a strikingly fresh trip down what may seem a well-worn path.
Doyle's camera glides through Noi's house, and at one point household objects hang in mid-air, recalling the swirling vortex of leaves in Hero. This sort of moody visual poetry is the highlight of a film whose pleasures come not from peace and understanding, and not even from observing human foibles, but from watching a lizard on an apartment and such scenes. The performances are spot-on (with great chemistry between Asano and Boonyasak), the ample humor is gentle and dark, and the guns and gangsters are thankfully minor. Ratanaruang's playful flourishes are exciting - he swaps actresses late in the game, experiments with dream-vs-reality, and shows his opening title some 30 minutes into the film.
One bizarre sequence, in particular, (it could be a dream or fantasy, a stoned hallucination, or just a neat time-lapse trick - and those who've seen the film, I imagine, know exactly which scene it is I'm talking about), is altogether unlike just about anything I've seen on screen before. In its ambiguity and eerie otherworldliness, it serves to epitomize the tone that Ratanaruang successfully sustains throughout the film - and that will very likely continue to stick with you hours, even days after viewing it. Just like the film itself. -
MCT:August 17, 2007Will have to watch this one. Not necassarily good or bad. Will see. Want to watch!
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MCT:October 1, 2008I love how slow and detached this film is. It never really tries to go anywhere, and I love that about it. It's a very quirky film, slightly awkward at times but always keeps you interested. The atmosphere is very calm, which I also enjoyed... isolation and hopelessness reign supreme. Great stuff.
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MCT:September 15, 2008É uma mistura de Amelie com Napoleon Dinamyte com temas orientais como sexo e suicídio. É daqueles que você pensa em várias possibilidades mas não tem certeza de como acaba.
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MCT:August 15, 2008Upstream Prize (Best Actor -- Asano), 2003 Venice Film Festival; FIPRESCI Prize, 2004 Bangkok International Film Festival.
A brilliantly atmospheric, sweetly nutty film. -
MCT:August 2, 2008Last Life in the Universe delivers a pretty interesting story about a frustrared suicide man. But my problem with this movie and like all asian movies is just that this movie is so slow and boring at times. A little more of intensity in some scenes could be good.
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MCT:July 27, 2008
I was in love with the feel of the story, then an hour passed and the movie kept seeming to drag its feet. There's no tension to balance the calm.
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MCT:July 17, 2008A story of a (sexy) man who decides to end his life, but then meets a girl whom he clings to, who as well, finds her life miserable. Favorite!
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MCT:June 14, 2008
a mixed bag. unique story. a lot like Ki-Duk Kim. fairly slow at times even for a character drama, and got weird at the end. could've been a little better but pretty cool at times.
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MCT:May 27, 2008
Lovely to look at. The story confused me a little at first, but with a little thought it's actually pretty straightforward.
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MCT:April 23, 2008
A whimsical film that moves along at a tranquil pace; it may either appeal to the viewer or drive them nuts.
For the first bit I thought it was going to drive me crazy, but then it lulled me with the wonderful cinematography and oddly intriguing story of two lonely people who wind up together.
Really top-notch in a quiet, understated way. -
MCT:March 19, 2008
Love this movie. The movie's director is a complete genius, with his techniques from making the film interchange smoothly from a "glossy" to an indie movie as the story line progressed to choosing to make the actors speak biligually.
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MCT:January 27, 2008
It takes a long time to get into it and can be confusing, but heart rendering performances from the two leads (including the wonderful Asano Tadanobu) makes up for it. Especially Asano's wonderfully understated, severely suicidal and mysterious Kenji who finds reason to live again with Noi after a tragic accident brings them together.
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MCT:November 6, 2007
Beautifully, soberly, shot. The characters draw you in. The director's has a talent for atypical non-linear storytelling and sometimes complete lack.
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MCT:August 24, 2007
not only is the cinematography stunning, the story is just as brilliant and wonderfully acted out. and oh, the music created such an amazing ambience. beautiful beautiful film.
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MCT:July 12, 2007
di ko nasimulan, but i wanna watch it again, very interresting characters...mabuhay ang gov't owned stations! dahil sa kanila napanood ko to! rpn9 rawks!
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MCT:June 25, 2007
Wong Kai Waresque thai flick about two lonely characters trying to find a way in their lives. While this type of "oh i'm so lonely" melancholic flicks are hardly my type the film has plenty of details here and there that makes it a more rich offer than other flicks of the type, which are usually just about as interesting as watching the grass grow.
Not a classic by any chance, but won't hurt a check. Good casting with Asano and that Thai chick. Also, special mention to the cameos of Rikki Takeuchi, Sakichi Sato and Miike. -
MCT:June 23, 2007
I originally thought this was a Takashi Miike joint production. And, it might not be hard to think that, it has a few of his trademarks on it. However, I think it goes beyond his zany style and creates a lethargic, atmospheric drama featuring a brilliant character absolutely dead to the world. Boonyasak's character is also quite removed and brilliantly lonesome. The slowness of the narrative, and the exchange between the two sisters especially removes all dramatic expectations of the viewer.
The environments of this film especially remind me of Chan-wook Park, and his love for colorful wallpaper. Keep an eye on the textures of those lovely sets. -
MCT:April 2, 2007
Is Asano... but still, besides the suicide attemps (thats what i like of the movie) is a pretty normal movie...
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MCT:March 4, 2007
Very hard for an American to find a good Japanese drama, but this is definitely one of them. Mostly a tale of isolation and hopelessness, but still contains a decent romance element. Cameos from Takashi Miike and a few of his crew as he takes on the role of one of the three stooges near the end. Don't expect crazy martial arts or over the top gore and perversion, just a down to earth drama. I was very surprised that I was so taken by this one, but it's a very cool movie.
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MCT:February 13, 2007
I cannot imagine a romance film that is more sincere or subdued. It's like watching every good dream you've ever had unfurl on the screen.
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MCT:January 22, 2007
Last Life In The Universe impressed me. it had a melancholy whimsy to it as it attempted to illustrate the oneness of the human soul and its connection to others, regardless of the person it inhabits. as the two main characters, behaviorly opposite by nature, blended into eachother without losing their own uniqueness, the movie drew a rather dreamlike picture of the symbiosis of relationships as well as the beauty and agony of solitude. the film isn't a masterpiece, but there's a definite element in an existential work like this that arrests you and steers your thoughts toward the glorious and mysterious faculties devinely placed in all of us.
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MCT:January 13, 2007
A suicidal, obsessive compulsive japanese librarian and a potsmoking thai slob create their own world together for a few days. Words alone can not express how amazingly beautiful this movie is. It's not a happy movie- but it's a cinematic experience absolutely worth repeating.
