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View Full Version : 4:44 Last Day on Earth (Abel Ferrara)



B-side
03-26-2012, 08:48 AM
IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1707391/)

http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz70/SalvadorDali_2010/Miscellaneous/poster-444-last-day-on-earth-L-fJl_.jpg

B-side
03-26-2012, 08:52 AM
4:44 Last Day on Earth is an audacious film. An apocalypse fiction without grandiose scaling or quivering masses staring into the source of their demise. It's a slice of life just before the end of the world. Cisco is a man trying to suffocate his emotional outbursts and Skye pours all of herself into her final piece of art. In doing so, she leaves something behind. Ferrara grants brief glimpses into the contextual drama around the central couple, carefully letting seep in the verisimilitude necessary to make Cisco and Skye into humanistic figures entrenched in real world drama. The media-fueled collective conscience of the film feels too familiar; like an inkling that the real apocalypse is playing out in our real lives in which we communicate more and more through computers instead of in person. There's a disconnect between the solipsistic boarders of New York apartments and the community that exists without, but the apocalypse thrusts newfound appreciation for love, family and genuine human interaction into the lives of its victims. A former drug buddy friend of Cisco's argues for ethics in the face of certain doom. A refusal to resort to drug use to numb the pain of the inevitable, but rather to witness the fireworks with clear eyes and a clear conscience. If Ferrara has made a more uplifting film, I've not seen it. Though that description seems contradictory to a film about the end of the world, the ending erases all doubt, a stunning affirmation of the finite nature of existence and the beauty therein. For my money, between this and Melancholia, this is the better doomsday drama. Trier's film has the aesthetic, but Ferrara's has the mood and the pathos.

NickGlass
03-29-2012, 06:17 PM
Hmm, well, that was awfully earnest...

number8
03-29-2012, 06:36 PM
Did you at least enjoy the Pat Kiernan cameo?

NickGlass
04-06-2012, 04:13 PM
Did you at least enjoy the Pat Kiernan cameo?

Of course.

B-side
04-07-2012, 10:34 PM
Al Gore is the face of climate change, like it or not. A desperate news anchor concedes to his celebrity in a time of crisis. I don't understand how that scene is of such controversy.

Raiders
07-12-2012, 02:36 PM
Let's re-cap the old discussions shall we...

First, number8 was like:


It was pretty fucking awful.

But Boner M was then like:


Are you a Ferrara fan?

number8 responded:


Sort of? I liked his trashier early stuff like Driller Killer, Ms 45 and King of NY. Never cared all that much about Bad Lieutenant outside of Keitel's performance, and Herzog made a much better version.

I think he's best at seedy shock values and atmospheric New York grime, which is why a movie almost entirely consisting of two new agey artist-types holing up in a penthouse apartment hashing out family bonds over Skype while waxing existentialism and politics, mostly intercut with footage of Al Gore and some white Buddhist guru lecturing about the nature of the world seem laughably way beyond Ferrara.

Some time passed, and then baby doll jived:



Ferrara probably shouldn't write his own pictures. The two leads are terminally uninteresting, and the story doesn't go anywhere. Also, I hate to be that guy, but it's pretty laughable when you have a chick painting a picture in an evening dress and some how not getting a drop on her clothes. I mean, I'm sure Ferrara has met a painter at some point in his life, so what gives? Plus, it strikes me as a little odd that two people who are so into meditation and Eastern religion would have two giant TVs in the same room, both going at the same time on different channels while the characters Skype and watch videos on their iPad. Biggest surprise: Apparently Natasha Lyonne is still alive.

But B-side had none of that jibber jabber and quipped:


Really? These are your complaints? A painter doesn't make a mess on herself and people interesting in Eastern Religions have TVs?

The characters aren't particularly interesting in and of themselves. It's their situation and its impact on their trajectories that makes them interesting. We only get brief cues as to some of their more personal traits and respective histories. The irony is in discovering them just before they're about to die.

And baby doll backsassed:


My remarks about the painting and TVs were more random observations than complaints per se. With the TVs, it seemed like Ferrara was going for something along the lines of The Third Generation (there's even a picture of Fassbinder tacked up on the wall by Dafoe's computer) whether or not it made sense for either of the characters. (Incidentally, I know from personal experience that while a couple can easily make do with just one TV, having only one laptop that they both share is a recipe for disaster.)

And here we are.

baby doll
07-12-2012, 02:42 PM
Backassed?

Edit: Oh, "back-sassed." I need to get my eyes checked.

TGM
07-12-2012, 04:51 PM
Bumping this up. Could you re-vote in this thread, baby doll?

Raiders
07-12-2012, 04:55 PM
I moved his vote already and deleted the duplicate thread.

NickGlass
07-12-2012, 05:30 PM
Biggest surprise: Apparently Natasha Lyonne is still alive.

Bless her soul, I love her.

plain
12-12-2012, 03:00 PM
This kinda blew me away... Ferrara's chamber drama about the final days on Earth probably speaks more about digitized world than anything else. Conversations between relatives via Skype seem to have extra importance placed on them, and represent some of the film's most honest scenes. One of the true underrated offerings of 2012.