LAST DAYS

LAST

DAYS

Artwork courtesy of HBO Films

Did Kurt Cobain really commit suicide? Was he murdered? Or, was it just death by misfortune? Nobody knows, and everyone has a theory. With his latest film, Gus Van Sant explores the final hours of Kurt Cobain’s life without attempting to unlock any of the mystery - he only wants to reflect upon it. LAST DAYS is the third film of Van Sant’s trilogy of death stories inspired by newspaper headlines; and, in it, Van Sant gives us a psychological study, not of his Cobain-like character, but of ourselves.

From the moment Blake appears onscreen, running through the woods and mumbling to himself, you have no idea where he is, what he is doing, or what is going through his head. Is he running towards something or away from it? Is he lost? Is he crazy? Van Sant refuses to tell us, and that is the beauty of LAST DAYS. He wants us to draw our own conclusions about what we are seeing – without getting too close.

No one can get close to Blake: his friends, his band, the Mormons who knock on his door. Even the camera remains distant, almost as if it is afraid to get sucked into the downward spiral of this deeply tormented musician. By distancing us, Van Sant is asking us to observe Blake, not to understand him. Throughout the entire film, Blake’s face remains hidden until the very end. Right before he dies. In a single poignant moment, Blake lifts his face towards the sky, and we see it for both the first and the last time.

Before his untimely death, Blake’s days are filled with avoidance and isolation. He avoids the entourage that has taken over his house, his bandmates, his record label, the Mormons knocking at his door, and a private investigator. Blake avoids these people because they only reach out to him when they want something. Everybody wants something from him. These “rabbits,” as Van Sant calls them, are dependent upon Blake for survival; and, in one of the most disturbing yet funniest scenes of the movie, Blake actually dresses like Elmer Fudd and hunts them down while they are sleeping.

Another observation Van Sant makes about Blake is that he is a musician living in a world without music. You don’t hear the first song until 30 minutes into the film, and it isn’t even Blake’s music. His music won’t be heard until the film is almost over; and, the camera again plays an important role in distancing. When Van Sant positions his camera outside of Blake's house looking in at him through a window, he starts with a tight establishing shot and slowly zooms out while Blake first plays his guitar and then his drums. The camera backs away from him so slowly you don’t even realize it is happening until Blake suddenly looks like he is a million miles away, and he and his music are both distorted.

So, what actually happened to Kurt Cobain during the final two days of his life? No one will ever really know; and, these missing elements leading up to his death are what make his story so unforgettable. Like Blake in LAST DAYS, Cobain was probably haunted by so many demons he couldn’t tell up from down, day from night, or fantasy from reality. What exactly did those demons tell him? Do we really even want to know? Maybe those Mormons knocking on Blake’s door were correct when they said, “sacrificing innocence will make you innocent again.” In any case, Gus Van Sant leaves it up to us to decide.