Day 211: Last Night (October, 6)

It sounds obvious, but I think is important to highlight that we see a movie on the present time, doesn't matter how many times we have reached a specific production. Our memories of it, however, belong to another place entirely. And it is with this intricate mix that we usually revisit a movie.

Until this day, I've saw Last Night maybe three of four times, I'm not sure. I always cherish the remembering of it: story, characters, feelings, soundtrack, direction, performances, subject... Everything in this movie calls for me. After seeing Before We Go, I wanted to revisit this beloved movie to see what it would say to me today.

And everything that I remembered was there: the first scene that starts even before the movie, on the studio logo, pulls us right on the story. The quiet piano sound captures us even before the film actually begin. A sense of melancholy, suspense, doubt is there on the sounds and images, in Keira Kneightley expressions, in the alternating time of the first scenes. We see something that was and that was no more in the following moment, because of the seed of a doubt, one that seems new, but that has been hovering over that couple for years.

My usual enchantment regarding the careful direction was still present too. The detailed scenes, every tiny part of those characters life and movements lead to their motivations, in order to present the following conflict we'll witness on screen. I always have a sense of elation with this movie. I love those character's, their interactions, especially the one between Keira Kneightey and Guillaume Canet. The atmosphere of this movie is something else too, beautiful. And all that was still there, as I'd hoped for.

For my surprise, however, I perceived some events differently, especially the impacting last scene. The outcome for those characters changed substantially for me, in the opposite direction of what I've have thought before. We can not count with a movie to stay the same, fortunately. And Last Night has created itself for me in an entirely new fashion on its last moments. I was astonishingly looking at the final credits without believing what had just happened in me.

Every day with movies, and they are able to enrapture me more and more through their surreal and accurate portrait of people and life.

Last Night. Directed and written by Massy Tadjedin. With: Keira Kneightley,
Sam Worthington, Guillaume Canet, Eva Mendes. USA/France, 2010, 93 min.,
Dolby Digital, Color (Netflix).