Synopsis
There is a time to die and a time not to
After a film production wraps in Peru, an American wrangler decides to stay behind, witnessing how filmmaking affects the locals.
1971 Directed by Dennis Hopper
After a film production wraps in Peru, an American wrangler decides to stay behind, witnessing how filmmaking affects the locals.
Dennis Hopper Stella Garcia Don Gordon Julie Adams Roy Engel Tomas Milian Daniel Ades Toni Basil Peter Fonda Henry Jaglom Kris Kristofferson Michelle Phillips Dean Stockwell Russ Tamblyn Samuel Fuller John Phillip Law Sylvia Miles James Mitchum John Alderman Rod Cameron Severn Darden Eddy Donno Warren Finnerty Richard Rust Poupée Bocar Robert Rothwell
Chinchero, La última película, Fuga da Hollywood, Η Τελευταία Ταινία, 最后一部电影, 마지막 영화, ラストムービー
"Bergman is the greatest. He got it all together, man . . . We think the Indians are primitive because they believe that hairy men come out of the mountains at night and carry off stragglers, but real people came out of hills around L.A. and murdered Sharon Tate . . . I see areas of light and shade first of all and color as an afterthought. Light is my obsession. I feel it as an elemental source of power, like a kind of cosmic coal. It makes things grow, it makes things die. It can turn into anything - a plant, an idea. Movies are made of light. Just think of the power of light to transform itself into everything we are and can imagine!" - Dennis Hopper
For my 10,000th log, I wanted to do something special, so I decided to touch specifically upon a film I deeply adore but, for some reason, have yet to log on Letterboxd. Maestro Dennis Hopper’s seemingly implausible but potentially successful attempt to reject the inherent post-modern nature of all art, and invent a novel or at least incredibly idiosyncratic approach to the organization of the image — montage through the cutting & cutting, and eventual annihilation of a traditional visual language, (meta-)contextualized by sociopolitical exploitation (outright imperialism) and, of course, the necessary audiovisual bedlam that comes along with such catastrophic colonialist behavior. Tones constantly shifting, paces suddenly progressing & regressing, sporadic back-and-forths between smooth contemplation and immeasurable (& indeed psychologically irritating, but…
charges that this is reductive and possibly narcissistic aren't necessarily unfounded, but Hopper conversely refuses to exclude himself from his own anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist rant. even if these are some easy targets he acknowledges that he's complicit in the insidious mythology that allows them to flourish.
burn baby burn. basically the encapsulation of American imperialism, a bunch of drunk disorderly white men stumbling through chaos, burning the world over gold they don’t know how to find.
"We ain't never gonna be rich. But we found it."
or
"How have you sinned?" "The movies."
or
"Let's just get this done, I got a lot of things to do."
or
"Keep headin' west."
Dennis Hopper's experimental film was fraught with problems and apparently bombed upon release. It's not hard to see why, but certainly there is something interesting here. The film is basically a giant metaphor for colonialism. A film crew is making a western in Peru. They have invaded another country and are using the land to tell fairytales about American history. The film wraps up and the crew head off, but film hand Dennis Hopper stays back - only to find that the locals are now copying violent scenes from the film. It's an interesting concept and all quite on the nose. It's fair to say that Hopper was most likely more than a little bit high when he made this,…
Hollywood imperialist fantasies devouring themselves. I like how The Last Movie chews so much, but in the end is pretty much about Hopper himself. His narcissism and liberal self-hatred put to feed of each other rather well. Anyway, if you are going to make I movie about the ideological implications of movie fantasy it makes sense to put the focus of authenticity in your movie star body, at same real and pure projection. It is in many ways an unstable film milking a lot o a series of imaginary distortions starting with suggesting a Latin American passion (Hopper's friend Jodorowsky influence is obvious) and making its Peru as primitive as an ugly gringo fantasy as possible. It is deliberate less awesome than its best parts, but its alienation is effective as personal expression and a mood for the audience to get lost own as contradictory as that might sound.
Tired: Dennis Hopper was a wildman maverick who thumbed his nose at the Hollywood system.
Wired: Dennis Hopper was a wife beating drunk who couldn't keep his shit together long enough to finish editing his second movie.
Inspired: New Hollywood was a bunch of privileged young white dudes who didn't rewrite the language of cinema in any significant way and aped more accomplished world filmmakers.
At least Laszlo Kovacs made Peru look nice? I could've done without all the cowboy hat wearing acoustic guitar strumming '60s Laurel Canyon-hip Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers cosplay either. Narcissistic muck.
I read Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls roughly twenty years ago, and it was important in my burgeoning obsession with film. I was well versed with many of the titles, even by that point, but it definitely kick-started what has been a twenty year love-affair with films from the 1970s.
The film that towered over the book for me, was The Last Movie. However, this was the late-1990s and it was near impossible to see. As the years progressed it became easier to see, YouTube, revivals, and the like, but I waited to see the best possible version I could. Along came Arbelos and they promised a great restoration. Then it became clear that Indicator was going to pick…
Dennis Hopper killed cinema in 1971, and we've only been failing to resuscitate it ever since he made The Last Movie.
But in all seriousness, The Last Movie is some sort of a unique beast - it's a film that almost feels very critical of the very context in which it's being made, as reflected through what's seen onscreen. If there's anything else that is worth noting, it's just astonishingly beautiful - from this and Easy Rider alone I'd already want to go ahead and check out more of Hopper's films as a director, because he certainly does know how to make them look incredibly beautiful.
It's a highly challenging work, but if anything that should be more than enough to make The Last Movie a staple of the New Hollywood movement.
"The Last Movie" is a 1971 surrealist drama film directed by Dennis Hopper. Also starring Hopper as the centralized character in the lead role, the film marked for a tumultuous undertaking in Hopper's career, amounting to a considerable amount of stress and delays. Seemingly being consumed by all aspects of this feature while also balancing personal demons of sorts, the film haphazardly made its way through production with it being finished well after intended delivery was due. Still with that being said, sometimes there is a clear historical energy for haphazard productions to age with a cult or higher appreciation, not only for its message but also the battle stories it gained along the way. "The Last Movie" was said…
This is a much better film than I was led to believe. Stronger than Wells’ OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND in thematic clarity, if not in raw filmmaking muscle.
Several absolutely horrible Americans descend on rural Peru to exploit, harass, profit from, and (the biggest sin of all) make movies that appropriate the foreign landscape into their American Western myth making, but exclude the local population. To this end, Dennis Hopper plays a not-too-bright monster dreamer staying in Peru for the cheap land, women, and every other kind of gold he can get after the film production that brought him there heads home.
His brutality, selfishness and loyalty only to the other Americans he encounters is a take on American…