Twice In One Week

We went back to the Grosvenor cinema last night, and saw Last Days, a fictional account of the troubled death of a rock star offered in tribute to the iconic Kurt Cobain, and to the Pacific North West that played a part in shaping him. It does not make for easy viewing, but it's a fascinating offering if you can cope with slow and largely improvised action.

Two motifs stood out in particular for me:

• The first is the omniprescence of noise - the roar of a waterfall; the cracking of a fire; birdsong; human, and human-made, noises; noises inside-our-heads - and how oppressive this can become, under certain circumstances...
• The second was changing clothes - the central character almost constantly taking off or putting on clothes - a stained T-shirt; loose pants; a black dress; heavy coat and hat - changing his mind almost as soon as he had made the last change, in a desperate attempt to find a comfortable identity...

I was also deeply struck by the different ways in which characters related to each other. The other members of the band relate to the central character only in as much as a means to meet their own needs - travel-money; heating; help with lyrics - with no concern for his obviously troubled state. Only a Yellow Pages salesman, who meets him by chance in the course of his business (played by a real Yellow Pages salesman who happened to turn up during filming...) shows any concern, though even he is unable to reach out to him. Which suggests that our passing relationships have value beyong what we might normally recognise. And then there was the squirm-making door-to-door Mormon missionary brothers, so awkward in the environment they find themselves in, with the ideological commitment - and relational lack of commitment - to carry on in their mission without being de-railed by those they meet, having no "plan B." A salutory tale for those of us who, just like them, believe we have something worth sharing, something that "few young people are being attracted to"...