In one of the scenes featuring Blake wandering through the woods the camera is panning to show him stumbling along. As he walks past a bush, he keeps walking whilst the camera stops and focuses on the bush for a good minute or so.
Can anyone explain to me what the hell that was about?
maybe that was..art? I just think that the shot,like the Boys 2 Men - video was on there for too long..
sharei thought you meant when the brunette with glasses and no underwear picks him up in the doorway.that was very good inded.
shareactually, she had underwear on... :D but yeah, I think that last days is a beautiful piece of cinematography.
shareI know a lot of people will disagree with me, but I am tired of directors like Van Sant (this flick and Gerry for two examples) giving me beautiful cinematography and calling it art while leaving out anything else that makes a movie meaningful.
this is the worst movie i've ever seen!!! i bought the movie at the store because i'm a Nirvana fan. This movie is a piece of *beep* and it makes Kurt's last moments seem stupid and catastrophical. gus van sant, there are many ways to make money, go to hell!
shareYeah, I'm sure he's just rolling in the dough after making this one.
All I can think about are dudes.
thats what i thought too.
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my revenge on you will not kill you. it will make you want to kill yourself.
Oh my God! I thought the same thing! I was like "you have GOT to be kidding me". Film is a part of the Performance Arts--art that is made for an audience and not for their own self serving reasons. For those who disagree then they should make movies or music and just screen in their basements for then their buddies.
That movie was such bull. It took a great concept and cast and rolled it into a large cinematic crap ball.
You're an idiot.
Orson Welles never made an all-yellow movie.
You are and so is anyone else who has watched more than 15minutes of Van Sant's movies (excluding Good Will Hunting).
share[deleted]
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...well, you said it, not me.
shareI thought about the "Bush scene," too, especially since it seems to occur at a moment when a sense of traditional drama is taking shape--it's as if the film seeks to disrupt the viewer's anticipation, and his desire for the camera to move with Blake. I think a few things are going on here: in a general sense, I think this move continues to build a sense of alienation, in this case by frustrating the narrative line; it sort of a reversal of the long shot in Eyes Wide Shut, for example, forcing the viewer to become aware of the film as a film, but in this case thwarting the building "suspense."
I also think this scene hints at its conclusion. Like Titanic, everyone knows already how this film is going to end, and we can see the movie play with expectations along the way. Not to sound trite, but this scene suggests to me: the world keeps going, even when we run out of the frame. That's a pretty sobering theme in a movie that moves slowly toward a suicide.
i hate every ounce of this movie, and especially the bush scene. but your explanation has suddenly made me appreciate a whole lot more. maybe i'm just lapping up your *beep* like an idiot but you sound pretty convincing :P
sharewho me u ahole?
shareAbout the box.
I think that in real life Kurt was just out of rehab before he died. The box may have existed for real, but it also works as a symbol. He did actually start shooting drugs again. I am glad that Van Sant never actually showed the actual syringe and all that. When he brings the box inside, the camera gently slides up and shows Blake`s face and you cannot see what is he doing with his hands. I am glad that this is not a typical Hollywood movie and that it did not focus on him as a star (like "the Doors", it is a good movie, but not a good account on Morrisons real life) but as an artist and a real person.
Self absorbed tripe.
The movie is painful to watch
Van Sanat had to take a leak.
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Ah f++k it dude, let's go bowlin'.
For what its worth: the most obvious reason the film is paced so slowly is because that is what it feels like to be on heroin. The reason so many people seem to be angry with the film is because you have no experince to relate to whilst watching it.
This film is a masterpeice because it truy managed to capture what it is like to be off in a sedantary drug bubble, and the relationship between this state of mind with music and death.
The film is an insight into someones last days on earth (like the title says) and if ever you have felt close to death whilst on heroin you would know that this film is insightful like no other.
We're so used to people dying on film in a hail of bullets or with strings soaring - this is death at a more truthfull pace - reminds me of the tales of native americans who would walk into the wilderness when they knew it was their time to die. If a film were to be made of that you can be sure of a few lingering bush scenes.In fact, this film is a lot like that - its Kurt going out into the wilderness one last time...
So the bush scene does at least a couple of things: it enforces the pace and it also anchors what will be left behind, the protaganist walking off stage left, affirming that he will die.
At least I have cinema.
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Holding a shot for some time after the action has moved out of frame is an effect used by many good directors - most famously, frequently and effectively by Yasujiro Ozu. There can be several reasons for this, but often it is to allow the viewer to meditate on the significance of what has happened, to set a mood for what is to follow, or to make a point of the transience of human actions and experiences. In this case, all those three motives apply.
The whole film is encapsulated in the opening sequence - a suffering man who has reached his limit, fleeing human society, stumbling through nature, pissing in the presence of a waterfall and seeking grace and release while huddling in the night.
The early sequences remind me strongly of another deeply impressive, thematically similar film - Wim Wenders' "The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty Kick". There are many other instances of Ozu-like scenes in the film, and throughout it Van Sant also seems to be channeling Rainer Werner Fassbinder at his very best. These remarks are high praise from me - I have seen many thousands of films and am a hard marker. If you want to compare the style to another American director, the closest would be Jim Jarmusch.
I have little knowledge of, or interest in, Kurt Cobain, but this brilliant film totally engrossed me. The judicious use of the stationary camera was one of the contributing factors - far better than some of the hand-held shots that detract from "Paranoid Park".
The few posts in this thread that actually attempt to explain the lingering shot of the bush are all well thought out and interesting. I wish that more people would open themselves to the many ways a film can express an idea. Sure, you can argue that it's just a shot of a bush that goes on for too long. But what if it's something else? Isn't it more interesting to try getting into the mind of a filmmaker, to figure out why he or she makes the decisions they make?
Open your mind to the possibilities of film. It's more fun, and rewarding when you see a film really hit the potential of the medium.
That shot lasts about 40 seconds. And it's interconnected with what that guy looking for Blake says about something he picks up from him house - the object is made of film stock material that will eventually burn out. I know this may sound kind of nuts, but to me it immediately connected with Kurt's "burn out than fade away" stuff written in his suicide note AND with Van Sant's novel "Pink", which is mainly centered on another self-destructive guy, River Phoenix, and also has a character called Blake/Cobain - the connection being in the fact that the title of the novel comes from the color film stock gets when it's destroyed, burnt.
It's almost like by filming that very long shot with that bush right after Blake disappears (for like the 10-th time by that moment in the film) the director is fu_cking with our heads (and he most certainly is, judging from this thread) and forces us to really, really take into consideration what that guy says about the object in Blake's house because he's actually talking about Blake. He's talking about US looking at Blake/Cobain through someone else's element - celluloid - and how he implodes, disappears, through the film before our eyes.
Off with their heads!
ah i remember this scene when i had first scene the movie. omfg did it infuriate the living hell outta me. totally pointless staring at a bush? i was like wtf?! this bush isn't even beautiful!!! but yeah... i'm over it now and just see it as part of the contemplative pacing and mood of the film. i've seen the film 4 times now and it's hands down a masterpiece in my mind.
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