At the end of the world, art may not save us, but it will prove that our lives meant something
One morning, every human being on the planet hears a voice in their head. It's not a hallucination: it's a public service announcement. The simulation that hosts our universe will be shut down in a few weeks. Be sure to say your goodbyes. Apologies for the inconvenience.
To prevent mass chaos, the people running the simulation have dialed down our rebelliousness. They want none of that rage against the machine, thank you very much. We're expected to just go gentle into the night.
And yet, one man will spend his last days ensuring that his brief stay among the living will leave a mark. Our protagonist, Marshall, is a complete nobody. But in the face of eternal oblivion, that's what we all are. Regardless of his complete lack of talent, friends, or any redeeming qualities, he will stop at nothing to finally make the movie he left unfinished years ago. It's not a good movie, not even a good concept. But it's his movie. That it matters to him is enough. That hopeless scream against the void is the premise of the indie film The Last Movie Ever Made.
Now, to be clear, the fact that you're making sincere art doesn't automatically mark you as a good person. Marshall has learned the same narcissism he criticizes in his mother, and the way he gathers his moviemaking crew exposes the faults of character that have left his life stranded and directionless. He does acquire a more mature perspective about himself during the runtime of the film, but it's still an indictment of his person that it took the end of the world for him to begin that process.
Art is meant to be useless, if you go by Oscar Wilde's word. Nothing will change because of Marshall's movie existing. It won't convince the makers of the simulation to keep us alive. It won't buy our reality even one more day. When everything ends, so will art. So why bother?
The Last Movie Ever Made rejects that question. Its position is that it's precisely because we are limited and ephemeral that art is worth the effort. In fact, our finitude is what makes art valuable. It doesn't even matter that the beauty we create is doomed to fade away. It suffices to elevate the universe, to be a place where beauty once existed, as opposed to one that never had it.
It's a pity that the script doesn't maintain a firmer grasp of its own theme. The character of Marshall lacks consistency from one act to the next because the plot requires his immediate world to warp itself around his goals: one day, his ex-wife is angry at him for caring more about finishing his movie than about her recent family tragedy; a few days later, she happily stays for his sake and dismisses whatever her family supposedly meant to her. This muddles the film's earlier point about the lines that Marshall has crossed for his art. It's as if the fact that everyone will soon die rendered moot any consequences for repeated misbehavior on Marshall's part.
The film is made with almost the same simplicity with which Marshall makes his. The characters' situation already carries enough emotion without any need to punctuate it with fancy camera tricks, digital effects, or even a relevant soundtrack. This is a bare-bones production whose only ambition is to say what it means, and it succeeds at that.
In a possible parallel with the larger premise about a computer program coming to an end, the film's third act begins when Marshall's computer crashes and most of the scenes he's shot are lost. At that point in the story, it appears that his entire life's work has been for nothing. Even if he were to start again, he may not have enough time before the universe is shut down. There you have the human condition in a nutshell: We never know whether it makes sense to try, because none of us is promised there will be enough time.
So what does Marshall do? He tries again. Of course he tries again. Because that's what humans do when confronted with the absurd. Because, although no human effort can destroy death, art is the one human effort that death can't destroy.
Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
