FIRST AND LAST MEN

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B

Last and First Men is like a cross between Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It blends far-reaching futurism, black and white cinematography, and long, ethereal tracking shots of concrete architecture. Except in this case, instead of art deco, the structures onscreen are memorial structures still standing from the former Republic of Yugoslavia. These memorials were shot in what are now Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro.

And . . . visually speaking, that’s literally all it is. One black and white slow tracking shot after another, of these structures, clearly intended to evoke the notion of ruins of the future civilization described by the one performer in the film, Tilda Swinton, who serves as narrator. To her credit, her delivery is impeccable, and I could listen to her talk about anything in this mannered way, all day. Still, I’m glad the run time is only 70 minutes. With no action of any kind onscreen, this movie might just lull you to sleep. Many of the tracking shots go on so long that it doesn’t even matter. More than once I nodded off and when I came to again, it was still the same shot.

This film is receiving wide critical acclaim, and although I actually did enjoy it, I still take some issues with it. Far too much context is needed in order to appreciate it fully, which is always a pet peeve of mine. An astounding detail is that this cinematic art piece, which might be more at home in the Museum of Modern Art than in a theater, is presented as based on a novel—of the same name, by author Olaf Stapledon, first published in 1930. (Given that Metropolis the novel was published in 1925, and the film from which it was adapted also features black and white imagery of concrete structures, this brings the comparisons just short of coming full circle.) Last and First Men, the novel, tracks two billion years of human evolution, starting with the present version of humanity and spanning another seventeen successive human species.

To say this film, directed and co-written by Icelander Jóhann Gunnar Jóhannsson, pares down that insanely expansive premise is a grand understatement. The “story” as presented in the film is only ever revealed through Tilda Swinton’s narration, as though having been dictated by the last humans before cosmic annihilation, then sent back in time to our present day. Maybe to teach us about our future, maybe to give us the tools to help future generations, maybe both. How the exclusive footage of Eastern European memorial structures fits into that, exactly, is difficult to glean. It gives an air of long-dead civilization with just a few relics left behind, except in this scenario, wouldn’t these relics also have been annihilated?

Another darkly fascinating detail: Jóhann Gunnar Jóhannsson, up until this film, which was actually first released in Berlin in late February 2020, was a composer. This was his feature film directorial debut. As it happened, however, Jóhannsson died two years prior to that, to the month, in February 2018, apparently of a lethal combination of cocaine and flu medication. This means Last and First Men was both his debut and his last film, and that it should be such a broad—and, according to some, profound—rumination on existence itself is, in its way, astonishing.

I remain a little stuck on the premise, however. Maybe it’s just that people in 1930 had a lot easier time being optimistic about humanity’s long-term future, but two billion years? It actually makes sense for the span of time to be that long if it’s to encompass genuine evolution of species, but from the vantage point of 2022, it’s hard to imagine humanity surviving long enough to do any further evolving at all. Perhaps I should just think of this as yet another in a now-long list of “alternate reality” movies. Or, maybe I’m just not giving humanity enough credit: the narrator cites several things that affect the repeated rise and fall of civilizations, with climate change being among them. Perhaps believing that climate will truly render us extinct is excessively absolutist. We could be whittled down to next to nothing and still regrow our numbers.

Last and First Men challenges us to consider time on a scale far grander than most of us can truly wrap our heads around—the very thing that prevents theists from understanding how we could have ancestors who were fish. It does offer a great deal of food for thought, but it relies a little heavily on the thought portion, which is arguably tipping the scales too far for the visual medium of film. What this film has to offer is a pleasant enough experience, but left me wanting. The premise is far too epic in scope for there to be nothing epic whatsoever onscreen, exclusively in favor of otherworldly—if beautiful—shots of Slavic sculptures.

This means something. I just don’t know what!

Overall: B

Advance: MOONFALL

Directing: F
Acting: D
Writing: F
Cinematography: D+
Editing: C-
Special Effects: D+

Academy Award Winner Halle Berry. Patrick Wilson. Michael Peña. Honorary Academy Award Winner Donald Sutherland. John “Samwell Tarly” Bradley. Charlie Plummer. Hell, even Kelly Reilly or Kathleen Fee, or literally anyone else in the cast: what in god’s name did they do to deserve Moonfall? Has every single one of these actors truly hit rock bottom? Were they having a party together while reading the script the first time, got collectively wasted, and said “Yes, let’s do this!” Is this a sinister government plot of some kind? Are they victims of mind control?

So many questions! Someone should do an investigative docuseries about the making of this movie. Because I want answers.

Moonfall is unbearably bad, even by Roland Emmerich’s steadily plummeting standards. This is the director who has made “dumb, fun disaster movie” his brand. He’s fully into the era now where the “fun” part is gone entirely. I always loved his 1996 breakout Independence Day, largely because it blended then-state-of-the-art special effects with subtly winking, self-aware humor. It was a movie that didn’t take itself seriously. Although his 1998 follow-up, Godzilla, was a genuine dud, the same still could be said of other far lesser, but still fun works like The Day After Tomorrow (2004), or yes, even 2012 (2009)—which I gave a solid B! But, I could be generous in rating those films because of a level of entertainment value transcending the utter ridiculousness.

Not so with Moonfall, which is so awful, I saw it at an advance screening, in an auditorium full of people who had gone to see it for free, and I still think we should all pool our resources and sue for damages. The solitary silver lining to the experience is how much more fun it is to write about how terrible it is. This movie opens in theaters officially tomorrow, which means first screenings are actually tonight at 6:00, but remember: this is February. February release dates, especially for blockbusters, are always a bad sign. There is no month suitable for this movie’s release. It should have been thrown in the garbage. This movie is top to bottom, utter trash.

And it has talented actors in it! You sure as shit wouldn’t know it by watching this movie. Very early on, Halle Berry’s delivery of a line like “We just lied to the American people!” sets the stage for a genuinely painful experience. Patrick Wilson is slightly better while still clearly phoning it in. Donald Sutherland slums it in a bit part. How much did these people get paid, anyway? Was it worth it? The only performance that is even halfway close to fun is that of John Bradley, who gets saddled with a backward take on the “crackpot character,” where his theories about the moon being a “megastructure” (a word you will wish you never hear again for the rest of your life) built by prehistoric super-advanced alien technology turns out to be right.

Okay, let’s back up for a moment. I’m finally getting into the premise here, which is so idiotic, I think I’m genuinely dumber now just by sitting through it. This movie could have been improved immeasurably just by doing away with that “megastructure” bullshit, and making it just about the moon somehow getting thrown off orbit and causing havoc on the planet and its tides and such. Instead, much like 2012, itself a brainless movie that still looks like a Kubrickian masterpiece by comparison, Emerrich takes a “kitchen sink” approach to the proceedings, where seemingly anything that could happen does happen.

Except, of course, nothing whatsoever here is tethered to reality. And I do mean nothing. The way this movie is wildly derivative of far greater movies that came before it and then gleans over their compelling concepts like a pretentious middle school writer who doesn’t realize they don’t know what they’re talking about—all that is, frankly, low-hanging fruit. I’m even more annoyed by the more subtle misses, which are even more boneheaded when you pay attention to them. Not a single line of dialogue, for example, rings true for any scene or scenario in which it is uttered. In one scene, a group of guys carjack a group of our principal characters, including Sonny (Charlie Plummer), who plays the 18-year-old son of Patrick Wilson’s unfairly disgraced astronaut Brian Harper. One of the carjackers roughs Sonny up a bit, and actually says, “You a college boy? Huh?” Remember, this is literally in the middle of pieces of the moon breaking off and falling to the earth as huge meteors. In what universe would someone say that? Was this written by rightwing nut jobs who think colleges are the enemy? Sonny is revealed to be a bit of a criminal delinquent early on, not even any mention of his going to college. Mind you, this is just one example among many similarly baffling lines.

I have to mention the special effects, because they are ultimately just as lazy as every other aspect of this movie. In a sequence that truly should be a visual thrill, the moon, now much closer to Earth, has caused a tidal wave crashing into an urban neighborhood of the West Coast, presumably Los Angeles. Water crashes through streets and around Palm Trees, pushes cars and tumbles yachts, crashes against the first floor or two of buildings. In this wide shot, we see countless blocks of this—and none of the vehicles are moving before the sea wave arrives. We literally see no people at all, as if this city has been evacuated completely. Cut to Brian Harper showing up at a conspiracy-theorists mini seminar about “megastructures” (oh, for fuck’s sake) held by Joh Bradley’s KC Houseman character, at a hotel in that very neighborhood.

A fair amount of the imagery in outer space is rendered well, in terms of the effects. That’s as complimentary as I can get. When our heroes barely make it off the surface of the Earth ahead of a “gravity wave” and find their way into the center of the moon (which, remember, is actually a giant alien machine), Moonfall goes further downhill fast, on a curve so steep you didn’t even realize was still possible.

Roland Emmerich, who co-wrote this garbage with a team of two other writers, is now 66 years old. Granted, that’s not that old, but the filmography is the evidence: someone should check this man for early stages of dementia. How can he not understand what a black hole of idiocy and wasted time this movie is? Even worse, it’s completely witless. The one time it got a laugh out of me when actually trying to do so was with the use of the phrase “free bagels.”

On the other hand, assigning a medical or mental condition to the people who made this movie is too close to excusing it. Roland Emmerich and his writers should be brought up on assault charges. These people need to be held accountable. This movie is so bad it’s genuinely, deeply offensive. I mean, every blockbuster is a stunning waste of resources, arguably, but at least with a lot of them you can find some level of merit, either artistically or in terms of sheer entertainment value (and on rare occasions, both). But all I can think about is how much money was spent on this movie (reportedly $140 million!), just for it to fail on absolutely every level. This film is an epic waste of resources. If it has any use at all, it’ll be in the hands of terrorists, or maybe highly specialized masochists. I left the theater feeling like I’d just had a lobotomy.

There could be a scene with someone literally fucking the moon and this movie wouldn’t be any worse.

Overall: F