The Last Days, recommended vision of the apocalypse by the architects of Carriers.
Spanish cinema again diving into the topic of end times already touched Jorge Torregrossa with The End, which in the opinion of this writer is an interesting movie but misunderstood and offended by his nihilism in all that will satisfy The Last Days with their point of view and epic adventure. I think The End is a good movie and I said so in my review for this page, but I must admit that I had a better viewing The Last Days, which has a much more adventurous and exciting, even some of his epic moments more in line with a vision of the apocalypse focused on the fight for survival against the nihilism of the acceptance of the extinction that we raised was scarier The End. The End precisely that almost biblical warning that we are nothing and nothing better continue fighting. It was a movie defeatist. Opposite, The Last Days is a portrait optimistic that we must fight to the end, giving the viewer a much more entertaining and optimistic, less disturbing, the apocalypse.
The End was a requiem dark (yes recreated skillfully in broad daylight Mediterranean) determined to plunge into a millenarian catastrophism and crude, the Old Testament. The Last Days is a fable about the necessary change with an air of new era and focused on the issue of renewing cycles of life and civilizations. The End proposes exactly what its title says, the end of everything, without further explanation or more objective, ominous and absolute, something that has been paid at the box office. The Last Days suggests the end of a cycle and the beginning of something new.
Alex and David Pastor, who already had a highly recommended indy vision of the end of days and epidemics zombie style in Carriers, again get to a disaster that permanently change the human life on our planet as we know it. Dams of an attack of agoraphobia, fear of open spaces, capable of killing human beings are forced to be confined indoors, unable to go outside. The proposal story is doubly interesting as a true reflection of our times. On the one hand refers to this progressive seclusion in our homes and, what is worse, in ourselves, rather than abusing the use of new technologies. Furthermore, introducing its history, alluding to the economic situation that is devastating our society: the protagonist is about to be unemployed and co-star is the human resources manager of the company that has to fire him. This double reflection on two apocalypse that are changing our world, the fictional trend fueled by the detention and removal of real life, the street and contact with others that lead to new technologies, and fueled by the real claws of an economy in chaos and nonsense of massive layoffs, is a good starting point for this fable.
The Last Days is also very interesting because, in full consistency with the change in cycle addressing his argument becomes singular effectiveness with a summary of the main features of cinema.
An example is the way in which managers give clues to the origin of the disaster without actually opt for any possibilities, incorporating his dialogues allusions to the cloud caused by the volcanic ash, mobile phone masts, etc. It applied the same approach as George A. Romero to non-explanation of the zombie apocalypse when he made vague allusions to a satellite in Night of the Living Dead (1968).
Another example is the brushstroke of seed collecting is the character of Jose Coronado, who remember to hand over the legacy of the dying civilization Max Von Sydow Yul Brynner in The Ultimate Warrior (Robert Clouse, 1975), the film The Last Days it has much in common, and not just mean that flight by underground tunnels and sewers or almost agoraphobic that reluctance to take risks outside of its protagonists.
The Las Days has reminded me also, especially in the first part with the arrival crossroads Sants station, the novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky Metro: 2033, origin of a recommended action horror game survivalist.
These keys are developed with their own personality for The Last Days, that takes full advantage from the point of view of the pace to a flashback construction whose role is greater in the early stages of the story and, in another exercise of narrative coherence, is fading until those past memories of the protagonist fully disappear as characters and viewers progress on their way through the maze of the disaster and are assuming that the world they knew no longer exists.
This good rhythm makes the adventure travel in a very entertaining story to which I can only put one catch: his reluctance to make his protagonist, Quim Gutierrez, an antihero character as epic as enjoying his companion, played by José Coronado . I understand that vulnerability, doubts and weaknesses of the young computer cut metrosexual contribute positively to the character of the story as a story of initiation and learning survival, enabling also an interesting contrast between the characters of Coronado and Gutierrez, leads to improved chemistry between them, but in the third act and outcome of the plot miss Gutierrez take charge of your life with more authority, character relayed into Coronado, making good the lessons of this interesting character that has been reluctant mentor transmit along of travel and certainly giving it a more exhilarating epic that final challenge facing the same ballast dragging doubts and misgivings that accompanies it throughout the story.
Not a problem for this movie. It is something that affects many other characters of the same film genre. And who can doubt it compare Rick’s character in the TV series The Walking Dead with the original comics Rick underlying it, and thus perhaps explaining why most of the fans of this series we find grating that character and it seems much more interesting Daryl, and even the dreaded bastard Governor seems more sympathetic than this Rick. A rebound effect or response to metrosexuality and artificial vulnerability in surviving heroes of fiction of today, who seem to have forgotten its ability to serve as an example and encouragement or just strive to impose a model of masculinity that artificial and implausible transmits a worrying weakness or laxity as cultural fashion, rather than reflecting a real circumstance.
Make no mistake. This is not a sexist comment. I case with the character of Leticia Dolera, surviving an interesting character I would have liked to see more in the story, whose resolution is equally lax and in my opinion failed.
Put another way: after going through the experience that tells the movie, the character of Gutierrez, whether male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, have testes or ovaries, and thus has operated his genitals sex-change (because how brave do not live in a particular place of human anatomy below the waist, in the same way that love or affection does not dwell in a heart viscera), has been marked by and for the demands of survival in a way that must necessarily make him more epic character that he describes the film’s end.
In my opinion the creators have a legitimate right to do with their characters what they want. But we should not forget that the characters have the obligation and duty to become almost sacred fictional models for the viewer. And that, friends, is being lost in cinema in recent times in favor of a somewhat domesticated that eventually could become another possible origin of the epidemic which causes the catastrophe of fiction given by this film …
Miguel Juan Payán
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