Last Days (R, 2005)

Blake (Michael Pitt), who leads a famous alternative rock band, struggles to deal with his newfound fame and fortune. Fresh out of a rehab center, he makes his way through the woods to his Pacific Northwest home. Here his bandmates, Luke (Lukas Haas) and Scott (Scott Green) sleep, party, and impress their girlfriends, Asia (Asia Argento) and Nicole (Nicole Vicius). They try not to have to deal with Blake, who wanders around the house and grounds with his guitar and a shotgun. Blake descends into himself, trying to decide how to escape.

A mediation on sadness, desire, and lack of direction, LAST DAYS seems almost to stretch out its minutes. Its rhythms are deliberate, its images lyrical (courtesy of superb cinematographer Harris Savides), its mood alternately somber and droll. While the film moves slowly, its subject is strangely urgent, for you know from the start that this is Gus Van's Sant's much anticipated interpretation of Kurt Cobain's suicide. And so you know that the vulnerable, mumbling Blake will soon be dead. It's only a matter of time.

And yet the film is less depressing than quietly romantic, more emotionally elusive than morally judgmental. For some viewers, this approach to the legendary Cobain will be frustrating, even boring. But it is of a piece with Gus Van Sant's previous two films, Gerry (two young men lost in a desert) and Elephant (inspired by the Columbine High School shootings). That is, its lack of plot and lovely long takes and gently mobile frames reflect Blake's internal state, as he is increasingly dislocated from what appears a generic "rock musician's" existence.