Last Days Here

Don Argott & Demian Fenton – 2011 – USA

A die-hard metal fan and vinyl collector seeks out Bobby Liebling, the leader of an obscure but revered band from the 70s called Pentagram, and attempts to rehabilitate him for a triumphant comeback.  Pulled from the files of the “human train wreck” genre that hovers menacingly between the realms of art-house documentaries and reality TV, the film revolves around a character who is lovably bent on self-destruction.  His brain hollowed out from decades of crack use, Liebling is utterly helpless to function in society, lives with his elderly parents, and is unable to see that everything he thinks he needs in order to get healthy is, at worst, killing him and, at best, a mere Band-Aid on a gaping wound.  Depressing as it all may sound, Liebling’s eccentricity and the genuine love for him displayed by fans and family alike is endearing and often hilarious; building to a climax that would seem outrageously contrived if it had been cooked up by a screenwriter.  The only real – but inescapable – qualm I have about films like this is that they can only be as interesting as their subjects.  In this blog, I’m trying to focus more on the philosophy behind the filmmaking rather than just the content of films.  In that light, Last Days Here is profoundly ordinary.  Documentary filmmakers – (who often don’t have a much of a cinematic philosophy at all beyond a simple “point and shoot” aesthetic) – often get a pass from cineastes because it is assumed that the stylistic options are so limited.  But one has only to look at some of the documentaries of people like Werner Herzog or Frederick Wiseman to see that, even in the confines of a true-life scenario, the artistic will of an auteur can still lift the material above the routine.