LAST DAYS by Gus Van Sant In Hindsight, This is Pretty Good Cinema 3095 words

Submitted by: Felix Rebolledo Student ID # 1376349

In partial fulfillment for the completion of: Film Aesthetics FMST 212 Summer 2006 Professor: Randolph Jordan/Peter Rist

Concordia University August 14, 2006

LAST DAYS by Gus Van Sant In Hindsight, This is Pretty Good Cinema.

Although at first glance, Gus Van Sants film Last Days presents itself as an actionless, plodding, jumbled minimalist back-stage biographical musical, it comes together at the wire as a significant revision of Kurt Cobains persona and a powerful moral statement by the filmmaker. At the end of the movie, Van Sant presents three things which force the viewer to re-read and rethink the movie as a whole: the resuscitation scene, or more appropriately, the ascension scene; Gus Van Sant's Last Days writing and directing stand-alone card in the credits; and the disclaimer which states that Although this film is inspired in part by the last days of Kurt Cobain, the film is a work of fiction. Individually, these three "things" appear to be inconsequential but each has a specifically significant role to play in the re-reading of the film. The ascension scene provides a mystical/mythical dimension to the story which the on-screen plot did not have to that point. Van Sants credit, cut in during the last scene of the film, affirms his ownership of the text as his appropriation, his take on those last days. The disclaimer opens up the story even more by redirecting the mystical reading to make the association with the last days of Kurt Cobains life while distancing us from a strict biographical reading of the movie and invites the spectator to interpret the movie formalistically, at face value for deeper significance.

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Reading of the film without the ascension scene:

For a casual viewer watching this film from the confines of the codified expectations of a classical Hollywood cinema perspective, Last Days would reveal itself as an unsatisfying experience and an exercise in frustration. As a back-stage biographical musical in the spirit of Bob Fosses All That Jazz, Last Days doesnt have much going for itfor the average mainstream viewer, this is the antithesis of the genre. Its undramatic backstage settings and low-key showbusiness plot set in the world of grunge music do not provide the expected titillation usually provided by a full-blown Hollywood mise-en-scene featuring fantastic settings or locations, flashy costumes, stylized hair and make-up, a great looking cast of thousands, and big-production staging and lighting. What the average viewer gets instead is a low-budget feature set in a decrepit, beat up mansion with a (sickly) greenish colour palette, a cast where the principals are virtually unknown to mass audiences, look like they dress at the neighbourhood thrift store, drive rusted out junkers, and can barely keep warmhardly the elements of what dreams are made of. From a classic Hollywood narrative standpoint, Last Days is repetitive, plodding and lacking coherence: the film is spatially and temporally discontinuous. Reading the film as a linear narrative, it is difficult to follow and keep track of the actual course of events or to coherently define the spaces as characters move from one room to another. Like in Resnais L'anne dernire Marienbad, what plot there is seems inconclusive, directionless and fraught with

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inconsistency and ambiguity. Characters come and go without reason and situations are set up which do not move the story forward (the Yellow Pages salesman) or feel devoid of causality and purpose (the detective telling us about the Chinese magician). Numerous scenes frustrate the forward movement of the narrative and the temporal progression of the plot is difficult to ascertain (when Scott, Luke, Asia and Nicole leave in the car and cross paths with the detective and Donovan, whos coming and whos going?). Why does the filmmaker insist on repeating shots and framings (characters caught between floors on the stairs)? Or providing lengthened versions of shots as part of circular narrative sequences (Asia discovering Blake passed out in the TV room or Luke with Blake in the music room)? The films sound design is as frustrating and inconclusive as the visuals. The film is bookended with medieval musichardly the first choice of the Nirvana-philic grunge crowd. In fact, for a rock n roll film, there is very little music. Apart from the Boys II Men On Bended Knee and Venus in Furs by Lou Reed, the sound track is marked by a lack of big time commercial artists. The films music cues are works by the film actors themselves, Michael Pitt or Lukas Haas, or by small time alternative artists such as Rodrigo Lopresti a.k.a. The Hermitt and tenlons fort, not what the average viewer would expect. Soundscapes accompanying the visuals are often as disorienting and nonsensical as the visuals: in the opening scenes with Blake and interspersed throughout the film, we hear bells, doors creaking open and shutting, a church service, a mopedsound elements which make no sense with the environments

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presented on screen. Rather than engage us, the audio makes the viewer question his interest in what is being presented. Even if on a cursory viewing we guess or surmise that Blake is sitting in for Kurt Cobain, the traditional biopic read is totally unsatisfying. Where's the glam? The groupies? The limos? The night-life? The big rock concert stage shows? The meetings with the high-power deal-makers? Without Courtney or the daughter, theres no grist for the gossip mill. We dont even get the thrill (?) of seeing Blake cook heroin or shoot up with morphine. Instead of a genius and icon of the counterculture or the most important musician of the last ten years, we are served up a broken-down, mumbling, stumble-bum in a grimy t-shirt and torn jeans. If the casual viewer wishes to understand the film on its most superficial levels for referential or explicit meanings, the impulse is frustrated because the narrative of the film is not structured as a cause-effect chain and the film maker does not really come out (show) and make a nicely packaged moral statement. We either take the film at face value and drop it or scratch the surface and look for clues which will yield other interpretations.

Reading of the film with the ascension scene

The ascension scene is pivotal to coming to terms with Last Days. It requires that the viewer watch the film again in a different light and re-read it in a mystical or mythical way: the superimposition of a naked Blake onto his corpse,

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sitting up and climbing up an invisible ladder (a new cover of Stairway to Heaven?) and out of the frame is too reminiscent of the Ascension of Christ to not look within Last Days for symbolism which could point to the "Last Days of Christ." And if this is so, the ascension scene would beg the question of reading the film as hagiography or a messianic text. Given Blake's presentation as an incoherent and rambling protagonist, it is difficult to see him as a Messiah even if from the earliest scenes we are invited to make parallels: we see Blake in the wilderness (through which civilization passes through it in the form of a train) battling his demons; bathing in the river (Jordan) in which he urinates; mastering his fears and doubt in the night (by singing Home On the Range, a pun on focus on deranged?). The castle or mansion where Blake lives can be seen as the Promised Land, where Blake can forget the cares of this world in order to devote himself to finding Truth. The angels God has sent to minister upon him (Scott, Luke, Asia and Nicole) are far from angelic, theyre more like the dogs chasing the stag in the image hanging in the living room. Their drunkenness, sexual licence, excesses of all kinds and occasional travestism, always correspond to a call to chaos.1 And macaroni and cheese as the Last Supper is not what one would expect for our latter day Messiah. Though Van Sant presents the theme of wilderness as a recurring motif throughout the movie, both outdoors (the forest, the swamp, the river, the lake) and indoors (through wall art depicting wilderness), as the figurative setting for Last Days, Christs and Blakes wilderness experiences produce totally different results. When Jesus, the sinless one, comes to the Jordan, it isnt to be washed

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free from sin, but to be bathed in our sinfulness, to take on all the dark, dirty mess that is human life. Jesus is immersed in humanity. 2 Blake emerges from the river and tells the world to piss off. For Christ the wilderness is the ultimate place of solitude, silence, emptiness, purification, truth and openness, the place to be with God alone, free of all distractions, the place where we can discover the compassion, love and non-violence of God.3 For Blake, the wilderness is understood as disorientation, failure of purpose and total loss of identification. The wilderness is the moment in which we either throw ourselves into Gods arms or give in to the temptation of despair. 4 In the shot of the split in the road, Van Sant shows Blake wilfully opting for the latter; he chooses the left, the beaten track. It is at this moment that we see that Blake is unwilling to take on the role of the Messiah. And it is through his drug-addled, rambling existence (underscored throughout the film by the soundscape composition The Doors of Perception by Hildegaard Westerkamp) that we really sense Blakes lack of purpose. Though opiates have been commonly used for artistic or reflective purposes to bring clarity and increased focus,5 too much of a good thing will kill you. And if heroin was his key to the locks of the doors perception, Blake's ceaseless consumption (which we never see him do) become his own private Golgothaa slow, tottering march to his demise in the garden shed. The premonitory, recurring ringing bell motif (from The Doors of Perception soundscape, the doorbell, or the phone ringing) is reminiscent of John Donnes For Whom the Bell Tolls and its opening stanza, Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may

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think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.6 In looking at the film from a religious point of view, we come to understand that the events depicted by the plot is a Via Dolorosa of demeaned representations of passages from the last days of Christ or a loose interpretation of the Jesus in the wilderness story. Van Sant systematically undermines the Blake character to bring him down literally and figuratively to the level of (abject) humanityimplicitly, the film would have us understand that Blake, as a latter day prophet, is a failed Messiah.

The Significance of the Gus Van Sant Credit and the Disclaimer

If the ascension scene forces us to re-interpret the films visual symbols then the Gus Van Sant writing and directing stand-alone card asks us to accept Last Days as a filmic statement for which he takes responsibility. The fact that the credit is placed within a scene in the film, as a cut-away from the action and serving as an elision in the plot, calls attention to Van Sants involvement in shaping the form of the film, to the way the film works as a film and the devices he calls upon to make its statement. The key credits and the Kurt Cobain disclaimer (usually found at the very end of the credits) appear to form part of this way of thinkingthey can be read as part of the formal narrative strategy of the film, like framing, camera movement, etc, rather than as appendages. The credits call attention to themselves as signposts pointing at demystifying the process of

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production and for the viewer to pay particular attention at how these key production personnel have shaped or affected the way the plot has been presented. They encourage a more formalistic approach to interpreting the film. Applying this line of thinking to the ascension scene, we can see it as emblematic of the artifice of cinema. The superimposition of Blakes naked figure on the foreshortened prostrate body of Blake (reminiscent of Mantegnas foreshortened depiction of Christ) calls out to cinemas inherent powers to surpass paintings ability to put anything on a canvas/screen and make it believablethe simple superimposition (a technologically souped-up version of Magrittes surrealism) harkens to the earliest effects of cinemas illusionism at the hands of Georges Mlis and films subsequent development into a seamless, invisible narrative art form which would have viewers swallow hook, line and sinker its exploitative ersatz reality. The Kurt Cobain disclaimer unabashedly links the film with the last days of Kurt Cobains life. It acknowledges the easy association while distancing us from a strict biographical reading and excusing the film from having to present a forensic recreation of the events. Attaching the movie to Kurt Cobain can be seen as motivation for a unit-shifter marketing strategy or a politically motivated baitand-switch exercise in consciousness raising, but what it does do is give Van Sant free rein to deconstruct the Kurt Cobain myth and couple it to a decommodification of the narrative feature film. Van Sant rages against The Machine by refusing to get on the posthumous deification and idol worship bandwagon and by sabotaging the films narrative drives through the systematic

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undermining of the mainstream viewers expectations for narrative causality, easily understandable plot chronology, spatial continuity and environmental coherence. The demythification of Blake/Kurt Cobain as a Messianic figure has already been addressed and Van Sant takes this process one step further by forcing us to pay attention to the films formal elements by constantly distancing us from the spectacle. The film is made up of generally undramatic moments shot in long takes approximately 120 shots yielding an average shot length of just under 50 sec. which given the lack of drama and tension within the individual shots demand of the viewer that he or she experience in real time the disjointed hum-drum existence of the protagonist who often shows his back to the camera. The slowing down of the narrative, and the abundance of long takes with little or no camera movement, foregrounds the lack of intent in making the drama "interesting" and allows us to take in how diminished Blakes life has become. And when camera movement happens, it serves to distance us from the film or to attenuate the dramatic impact of a scene and call attention to itself. An example of the first is the shot where Blake runs away from the Private Eye and Donovan: he exits frame left but the camera pans to the right over some bushes, and after a moment Blake re-enters the frame as if catching up to the camera movement. To illustrate the second, the five minute dolly pull out (reminiscent of Michael Snow's Wavelength) where as the musical number gains in intensity the camera pulls away from the action to reveal the windows (frames within the frame) and the stone wall of the mansion instead of the obligatory push-in to a close-up of

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the musician going at his music: instead of heightening the suspense or the emotional impact of the scene, the camera movement dampens the drama. Last Days depicts Blakes physical and emotional constrains and the stultifying effects of the environment, by presenting shots as bastardized tryptichs (often in doorways) where the frame is divided into three zones in which only the central portion presents any action. These doorways illustrate Blakes constrained condition while reminding the viewer that the action is being framed on purpose. The frame motif is also picked up and repeated as window frames, picture frames, mirrors, television sets, etc to the point that this motif is more present than not and revealing of Blakes cooped-up mindset. For example, in depicting the doors of the garden shed, the meaning of the frame motif (as presented by the window panes on the French doors) is widened to include captivity or psychological fragmentation only after Blakes suicide are the French doors left open. The film makes the viewer work hard to piece together the chronological order of the plot and make sense of the visual spaces. The scene where Blake passes out in the TV room is illustrative of many of the techniques used by Van Sant to keep the viewer working overtime. Not only is this scene shown repeatedly, but it serves as a hub for simultaneous narratives. The music of Boys II Men from the video On Bended Knee (the TV as a repetition of the frame motif and as a representation of a fake, idealized reality) serves as the anchor for the scene even though The Doors of Perception drifts in an out to illustrate Blake's coming and goings from cogent consciousness. The music provides the linkage

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(as does the red chair) between the cuts or angles which bring the space together (distancing Kuleshov effect instead of a master shot and breakdown). The altered repetition of on-screen events serves to foreground the ability of the filmmaker to select and mold the narrative to provide multiple (possibly ambiguous) versions or interpretations of the same event and get the viewer to question the reliability of the narrative and the intent of the filmmaker. The fact that these strategies recur throughout Last Days encourage the viewer to take a skeptical stance towards the character, the film itself, the Kurt Cobain icon, and by extension, Hollywood, the media and life in general. In the words of the real Blake, If the Doors of Perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.7 But to look at this film through William Blakes poetry would cause one to start brushing off imaginary flies. In Last Days, Gus Van Sant refuses to ride the Kurt Cobain myth and is (ambivalently) reluctant to cash in on the Kurt Cobain name. He strips the film of any possible mythification of the Blake persona by dwelling on his constant drug use and by setting up from the earliest scenes his shirking of all responsibility or obligation as an alternative cultural leader to his fans. Van Sant is essentially telling us that notwithstanding his musical genius, Kurt Cobain was a mere mortal, a junkie with serious health problems and psychological issues. And in combination with the stylistic and formal elements of the film, Gus Van Sant seems to be stating that Kurt Cobains posthumous iconic persona is as fictional a fabrication as any run-of-the-mill Hollywood fiction feature film.

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Cirlot, J.E., A Dictionary of Symbols. Translated from the Spanish by Jack Sage. Entry on Orgy, p.244. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967-1981) 2 Rider, Anne. Facing into the Wilderness, A sermon preached the first Sunday in Lent 2003 3 (http://www.johndear.org/sermons_homilies/spirit_drove_jesus.html) 4 Ibid. 5 http://www.datejesus.com/sermons/cobain/ 6 Donne, John, For Whom the Bell Tolls 7 Blake, William, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, (1790-1792)