Today out of all days

Last Night (Don McKellar, 1998)


A film about a group of characters living out there lives in the last six hours left until the World ends. Pretty intense stuff right? Well it is, any movie that is about the end of the world gives off some kind of depression afterwards. Just thinking about how our own personal world will end when we die. The World may not go with us but yet the world and everyone leaves when we are the ones pushing up daisies.

Don McKellar gives us a film that seems so real yet very surreal at the same time. Looking at the world in it's final conclusion and the how people are reacting towards it. Mckellar is amazing with the characters he has here, they seem like very real people that are just living life and it happens to be the end of the world which brings me to the most important line in the whole film. The line is towards the beginning of the film and it's said by Patrick Wheeler's father who is played by Robin Gammell. The line goes something like "Today, out of all days". He says this because Patrick doesn't really agree with something his family says. For myself this line is very unsettling and i just couldn't get over it. There are comedic scenes throughout the film but i didn't laugh at all because well, it's the end of the world. It's very dark comedy and I'm a huge fan of it but yet this didn't seem right.

The other thing that i believe is very important to this film is a very specific music cue that comes out when the films title is shown on screen. The 10 second piece of music is completely haunting and gives a huge dark cloud over the film and i can't help but think this is probably the most important thing about the film. Don McKellar knows his music and he put that specific piece of music over the title for a reason. Whatever that reason may be is still a mystery to me and leaves this as probably one of the most hardest write up that I've ever written. After the scene with his family that I've written about in the previous paragraph i was left thinking about the music and it left me very uncomfortable.

Last Night's haunting tone revolves around the somewhat narration of a Radio DJ that plays a countdown list of his favorite songs throughout the film. Every song played by this phantom DJ fits perfectly with whats going on screen. I believe this film would have worked even better if the film would have used the radio Countdown of songs instead of the title cards to show the passing of time.

It might sound like i hated this film but thats far from what i thought about it. This film left me absolutely stunned. So stunned that I'm not sure how much i loved the film. Something entirely original that I'm going to have to watch it several more times. I know my appreciation for this film will grow after repeated viewings but it's just so hard to come to a conclusion right now but yet i have to. A film thats so hard to describe in words but yet so easy. Hey, It's just the end of the world.

Grade A-