#715 – 4.44 Last Day on Earth (2011)

4.44 Last Day on Earth (2011)

Film review #715

Director: Abel Ferrara

SYNOPSIS: With the world ending in twenty four hours and everything being wiped out due to solar radiation, a former actor and artist try and deal with the fact that this is their last day alive…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: 4.44 Last Day on Earth is a 2011 film. As the title suggests, the world is ending in a day; it’s not explained in any particular detail, but showing of footage of an Al Gore interview talking about the depletion of the ozone layer suggests that has something to do with it. The film actually centres around a couple: a retired movie actor named Cisco (Willem Dafoe) and Skye (Shanyn Leigh), a painter. There’s no race against time to save the world or anything of the sort: it’s more or less established that the world is ending, and the film explores how the characters are responding to that. From anger, love, nihilism, there’s a fair range of emotions on display that you would expect. There is this overwhelming feeling throughout the film that nothing matters, as everyone is going to be dead in less than twenty four hours. But this also bleeds into the film experience as well: why should we care if everyone is going to die anyway? Who cares whether they make up or how they spend their last moments? You could probably make this work in some form, but this film doesn’t really go into the necessary depth, or form those necessary bonds.

We are given very little information about the characters backgrounds and lives and we only really see at the very end. Centring the film on these two as it does, it doesn’t really give us enough of them to really empathise with their unique situation. As I say, there’s very little to say or do when everyone is going to die, but the film is just very loose about grounding the story from their position. We also get very little about what is going on in the world with everyone else, as it seems that life is just carrying on as usual for the most part, with people just treating themselves a little at the end: no mass rioting and breakdown of society that these sorts of scenarios usually entail. On the one hand it seems a bit odd, on the other you might wonder if even the end of everything would stop people going about their daily routine, and if it would really matter at that point.

Without the strong centre of the two characters, the film becomes very disjointed throughout, there’s some good scenes which bring out their characters, but a lot of fluff that doesn’t really elicit any emotional response. The ending in particular just shifts into this weird existential roll of unrelated footage and voiceovers that doesn’t really offer anything to the experience or provide much of an ending: it’s just odd, and if this film wanted to be more existential, it didn’t really bring that out during the rest of the film. 4.44 Last Day on Earth struggles from establishing that nothing really matters if everyone is going to die, but that also translates into the viewing experience of why should we care what these characters do if they don’t and everyone is going to die anyway? Ann interesting subject to broach, but struggles with its own meaninglessness, and complicated further by not grounding the story in more established characters, or sometimes dragging in existential, artsy scenes without reason. In short, there’s some good scenes that work, but very little to tie everything together into anything substantial or meaningful.