The Last Supper (1995) is a parody on morals wrapped in an ideological argument between right and left. Coming out on the independent market before the term "indie" had been officially coined, the film never stood a chance. Without a romance plot, action sequences, or laugh-out-loud comedy writing to bring the audience to sensory overload-gasm there wasn't much to help this character-driven dark comedy come to light at the time it was released. Still, it deserves its due. With a thoughtful soundtrack containing original songs by Mark Mothersbaugh, a cast that includes pre-Something About Mary Cameron Diaz, and the versatile Ron Perlman as the would-be villain, this movie has all the acting power and subject matter of what probably would have been an indie heavyweight in the post-millennium film market. It was just missing a couple of things.
The first thing it was missing was money. But that's the easy answer. There have been plenty of movies that became cult classics after they were box-office duds, like Donnie Darko which grossed just over $100,000 in its debut, and Terry Gilliam's dystopian classic, Brazil. What those landmark films had that The Last Supper blew over was a thorough fleshing out of its central themes.
At the heart of Last Supper is a stereotype versus stereotype hyperbole. Five far left grad students are involved in the near accidental murder of a right wing lunatic. Then the question is asked: what if you murdered a person and the world was a better place for it. The answer is, you'd be a murderer. Pretty soon, their righteousness turns into blood lust and the adverse effects manifest themselves in a variety of ways.
The issues introduced by the movie are as pertinent today as they've ever been. The characters talk amongst themselves about the inability of the left to galvanize and the right's understanding of politics as a team sport. They conclude that the right wing is the party of action while the left is the party of endless and inconsequential conversation. The string of murders they commit with each person they kill embodying one issue that separates the right from the left along clear political lines, makes them feel like people of action. unfortunately, that action is murder.
All of these themes might have made for great cinema if the feeling if the characters hadn't been so starkly drawn. Three out of the five leading characters border cartoonish two-dimensionality, with only two of them undergoing character arcs that drive the plot forward.
While the tone of the movie is ambivalent between dramatic and comedic without ever completely arriving at something that could be called dramedy, there are some laugh-out-loud funny moments and there are some symbolic elements that give depth for the movie watcher who like to have stuff to pay attention to. For instance, each character is named for an apostle which, along with the title, foreshadow a tale fraught with morality and death. Along that vein, the would-be villain, a well-kept, well-spoken version of Rush Limbaugh, has the name Arbuthnot. For all the biblical scholars out there, if you know that God's name in the book of "Exodus" is "I am what I am," meaning that the villain could be named for the antithesis of that which would mean he is what he is not.
In the end, they meet their nemesis and come to a point of catharsis. I enjoyed the movie immensely despite the pitfalls i mentioned earlier. I can understand why it raked in less than half a million dollars in revenue and why it probably skipped the major box offices all together. All the same, I love the satire in it and the arguments that it brings to mind. It makes my list of underrated films of all time.
No comments:
Post a Comment