Rewriting Indie Cinema by Murphy J. J.;

Author:Murphy, J. J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER004030, Performing Arts/Film/History & Criticism, PER004010, Performing Arts/Film/Direction & Production
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 3)
Published: 2019-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 7.2 Thadeus selling Blake a yellow pages ad, Last Days

Once inside, Thadeus asks Blake, “So, how’s your day so far? As Blake slowly takes his seat, he simply mumbles, “Another day.” Thadeus informs Blake that he ran an ad last year for a locomotive shop that sells parts. As they discuss the ad in an utterly deadpan, serious manner, Blake removes his coat, revealing he is wearing a black dress. As Blake moves forward, Thadeus instinctively recoils and repositions himself on the chair where he is sitting. During their conversation, Blake suddenly slaps his neck and tells Thadeus, “Bugs.” Blake begins to nod off. In response, Thadeus sets up another appointment. Since the scene was improvised, neither performer could predict what would happen next, which creates a sense of palpable tension in their interaction.

Another improvised scene occurs shortly afterward and involves two very tall twin Mormon missionaries (Adam and Andy Friberg) who also show up at the door. This time, it is Scott who invites them inside. He offers them a drink, which they refuse. Scott asks them, “Don’t you … the blood of Christ thing?” They tell him, “We don’t drink anything that’s bad for our bodies.” He asks the missionaries if they encounter freaky things going door-to-door, but one answers, “Not normally.” The two brothers hold their bodies very rigidly, as one of them explains that they are there “to give him background information of their religion in hopes that you come to one of our services.” Fidgeting nervously and pausing as if losing their train of thought, the two give a very convoluted explanation about their religion involving the need for sacrifice and purity, but then suddenly become nervous when others congregate and abruptly announce they have to go.

The scene of the Mormon missionaries is interrupted by a cut to Blake in an empty room. Right after the scene with them ends, Blake slowly collapses. He crawls and positions his body against a door. When Asia opens the door, Blake sprawls on the floor. In a similar vein to what also occurs in Elephant, Van Sant shows the same event from the opposing perspective, creating a sense of temporal simultaneity. The viewer suddenly realizes that she or he has seen this same scene earlier. In this case, Asia had opened the door previously, causing Blake’s body to slump to the floor just prior to the arrival of the Mormon missionaries.

The scene disrupts a sense of what the viewer had assumed was linear time. Yet the effect of this approach in Last Days is somehow different than in Elephant. Mario Falsetto discusses the implications of Van Sant’s strategy in Last Days by suggesting that a disjointed timeline is used to create a subjective sense of the protagonist’s mental disorientation in the viewer: “The spatial and temporal repetitions formally represent Blake’s dislocation in the world. As we watch the film, our sense of space and time becomes as disconnected as the main character’s. The spatial dislocation and nonlinear temporality in the film induce a dislocation in the viewer.

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