November 18–25, 1999
movie shorts
Last Night
recommended
The directing debut from Canadian writer (32 Short Films About Glenn Gould) and actor (Exotica) Don McKellar is a work of stunning imagination and empathy. Set six hours before the end of the world, the film follows a group of Torontonians counting down the hours towards their mutual destruction. With acerbic humor, McKellar recasts mankind’s final hours as the countdown to a particularly pressured New Year’s Eve; everyone’s trying to find the perfect person to spend their last minute with. Heading an ensemble cast which including Callum Keith Rennie, Sandra Oh, Genviève Bujold, Sarah Polley and David Cronenberg (who comes across as endlessly creepy simply by being the calmest person in the whole movie), McKellar has come up with the ultimate not-with-a-bang-but-with-a-whimper scenario for Armageddon; rather than focusing on extraordinary men trying to cheat death, the film focuses on ordinary people coming to terms with their own mortality. There’s something deeply frightening about the notion that the world could end like this, with people acting like the same assholes they always are, but McKellar’s transcendent ending is a work of heart-shaking beauty, a flawless cap to a truly profound experience. (See Sam Adams’ interview with Don McKellar)
