TELL ME WHERE DID YOU SLEEP LAST NIGHT

Last night my friend took me to the premier of Last Days, which actually turned out to be a proper premier with a red carpet and everything. Michael Pitt and Lukas Haas were there as were Thurston and Kim Gordon. All these people showed up to the movie's after party at Pianos and Michael Pitt even wore a shirt that appeared to be from the film's wardrobe. He was polite when we were introduced and looked delightfully homeless and I caught him making out with his gorgeous girlfriend outside while smoking a cigarette. He looked happy. He looked opposite of what he was in the movie. That's called acting, people.

The movie was great and only about an hour and a half long, which was LONG ENOUGH cause it was totally depressing with very little dialog. Michael Pitt played Kurt (or rather, a character based entirely on Kurt named Blake in the movie) incredibly well, but you sort of don't really get a total sense of "ok, this person is really fucking depressed and he's going to kill himself." instead, it all seems sort of premeditated on Kurt's behalf. Like, as if he was totally strung out and high, but fully aware of what he was going to do for a few days. Planning it out and not wanting to get caught and have his plan foiled. Even when Kim Gordon attempts to save Kurt, delivering a speech to him that seems like something she's been dying to tell him for the past 11 years (if she didn't when she had the shot), he's unresponsive and doesn't listen to her.

Featured in the movie was Michael Pitt’s original work, which I must say is quite impressive. I’m not sure if he was given the task of creating a song that was as Kurt-like as he could possibly get it, or if the song he painfully played towards the end of the film was something he had previously written, but either way, it was sang exactly like you would imagine Kurt to sing it. Sadness, longing, more sadness, more longing. I never wanted the song to end and I actually plan on seeing Pitt’s band Pagoda next time they play as a result.

All the shots in this movie are like gorgeous photographs lined up to create a movie, there wasn't one camera angle or set up that I didn't find totally captivating. I also really enjoyed Gus Van Sant's method of recapturing different angles of a moment in time. For instance, capturing what's going on from Kurt's point of view and then recapturing that moment almost exactly but from someone else's POV. The first time he did this I thought it would grow tiresome, but alas, the movie was short enough to prevent this.

The scene where Kurt's body is discovered by the gardener was chilling. GVS masterfully captured the image that we all remember of Kurt's body in the greenhouse. The way his shoes were positioned, the way the french doors covered parts of his body, everything. It was almost as if you were there reliving the whole thing all over again, and it made me feel slightly uncomfortable, but at the same time, I felt a sense of closure that I can't really explain. Here I was watching a movie about the last perceived days of a person's life who meant the world to me when I was a young teen, and the whole thing is still as much of an enigma as it was 11 years ago, but at least I feel like I got to see it with my own eyes, even if that’s totally not true.