Millennium (Last Night (DVD))

Member Name: Jake Speed

Product:	Last Night (DVD)
Date:	30/09/09 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Interesting, atmospheric

Disadvantages: A bit talky for some perhaps

Last Night is a 1998 Canadian independent film directed by Don McKellar. It follows a small group of characters in Toronto as they spend the final hours on Earth before it is due to destroyed by an unstoppable natural catastrophe (never really explained in the film) that has been brewing for several months. The end is nigh at midnight exactly on New Year's Eve and we see over the course of the film how these different people decide to spend the remaining time before the clock ticks down to the inevitable - in addition to the unexpected events that sometimes interrupt these plans. Patrick (Don McKellar), still grieving from a personal loss, simply wants to be alone and drink some wine on his rooftop listening to music when the moment nears while his shallow friend Craig (Callum Keith Rennie) intends to sleep with as many people as humanly possible in the limited amount of time left. Sandra (Sandra Oh) has a suicide pact with her husband but is accidently stranded in town - meeting Patrick along the way - while power company manager Duncan (David Cronenberg), Sandra's husband, spends the remaining time telephoning his customers to tell them their gas will be left on right to the end as he waits for her. As the end of the world draws ever nearer we see what these characters do with their final hours and how they cope with the knowledge that both they and the planet will soon be no more in a mere matter of hours.

Pre-millennial existential tension and angst is rife in this indie and somewhat arty take on the end of the world picture as a small group of fairly middle-class characters intersect, fret, worry, joke, deal with family, and prepare for the end in their own way. Last Night resembles a low-budget Short Cuts or Magnolia much more than it does standard apocalyptic visions like Mad Max or George A Romero's Day of the Dead, taking a more offbeat approach to this oft-used cinematic device and playing out mostly in a series of swanky and sterile yuppie apartments. Some revellers in the streets, overturned cars and an ominously white glowing sun that seems to be slowly growing in intensity are used sparingly though in Last Night to create a palpable sense of unease, subdued doom and inevitability. This is a talky and genteel depiction of the end of life as we know it and relatively novel for that reason. A strength of the film is that the central premise is always compelling even if this isn't the most incident packed film you'll ever watch about the end of the world. You do find yourself wondering throughout the picture what you would decide to do if you knew for sure you had about six hours left to live.

Not an awful lot actually happens in the film but it does generate an uneasy atmosphere of imminent extinction for the characters. We see through glimpses of people on streets and news broadcasts that a slightly surreal air or normality is still maintained but panic and chaos is slowly starting to take root also. This creates the underlying tension in the film with the bleak premise contrasting with the subdued humour and brickbats thrown against modern life. There is of course though an element of optimism inherent in the story with the subtext suggesting that human beings, by and large, will try and do the right thing and stay committed to their duties even in the most difficult circumstances. Don McKellar as Patrick is more or less the central character as he endures a forced final Christmas dinner with his parents and family and then, despite their protestations, insists on going home to spend the final hours alone. His plans are disrupted though when he helps Sandra after her car is wrecked by drunken revellers as civil order begins to gradually crumble. McKellar subverts our expectations slightly by shooting the entire film in daylight. It adds to the vaguely unreal atmosphere that runs through the film as these characters go about their mundane affairs - like bickering over who can borrow which car as if it really matters anymore - with just hours left before the planet ending event occurs. We see how these people cope with that knowledge while they reflect on what their life was like.

McKellar's laid-back and slightly nebbish persona makes a nice contrast to the magnitude of the situation the characters face in the film and he comes across like a slightly more serious but wittier Griffin Dunne in Last Night which, on a trivia note, was once voted the ninth greatest Canadian film ever made. I have no idea whatsoever which eight films beat it in the poll but I just thought I'd drop that in there! The rather strange last Christmas dinner Patrick has to endure with his family illustrates the different reactions of people in Last Night. The older family members just want to be together and become nostalgic about the past. Patrick just wants to go home to be alone while his young sister Jennifer (Sarah Polley) is intent on spending the final few hours out clubbing with her friends. "I think maybe I should mention before you make any faux pas here," says Patrick as the group start to bicker. "That we have a tradition in this family, that we don't kill other people."

Callum Keith Rennie is a little one dimensional as Patrick's sex obsessed friend Craig although his final interactions and scenes with Patrick contain some really good nervous gallows humour and a very poignant moment of farewell. "What I do find pathetic is people who, as soon as they hear that the world is ending," says Patrick. "They rush out and try to hook up with someone like it was closing time at Studio 54." Geneviève Bujold also makes a nice cameo as a former teacher of Craig's who he wants to sleep with and cult director David Cronenberg's rather blank face and distinctive voice makes his scenes as Duncan always quietly compelling and you wish he'd been in the film a little more overall. We see Duncan, in the absence of Sandra, telephoning as many of his customers as possible to reassure them the gas will stay on until the end as his particular street becomes alarmingly noisier and more fractious outside by the minute. The film has a memorable end image too which makes use of the song "Guantanamera".

Last Night is an interesting little film on the whole with an intriguing premise and some nice observations about modern life and human nature. It has a good deal of dry humour and the premise always keeps you reasonably absorbed and interested to see what happens to the characters. It might be a trifle talky and slow for some tastes but Last Night is a thoughtful and likeable spin on an old and familiar device of cinema and literature.

Summary: The end of the world