I really wanted to like this film. I read an article in the 'New Scientist' magazine singing it's praises, so I had high hopes going into it. From what I had read from other reviewers, I thought this would be an existential, bordering on ethereal experience. Unfortunately, what I watched instead was the only ever 70 minute movie that couldn't justify even THAT amount of screen time. The shots rarely show the entire structures, and thus they create a sense of ambiguity, that while at first was appealing, began to border on frustrating and monotonous as the film progressed. The structures themselves were repetitive (although this is probably a result of the film-makers being constrained by forcing themselves to film only former Yugoslavian war monuments for...some reason). Tilda Swinton's voice over was captivating, and she is by far the best part of the movie. In terms of the 'plot', it really has no underlying message, or at least none I could decipher. Not every film has to be fundamentally tethered to a core theme, obviously, but when your film is just panning/zooming in on monotone structures, devoid of any characters, lighting (at least in the conventional sense) and action, it seems like it should be a given that the work at least has something to say. In short, people are trying to make this high school media studies project into a modern day reincarnation of '2001 A Space Odyssey' and I simply fail to see how they reach that conclusion.
Review of Last and First Men
