Sarah Polley Movie:

Editorial Review:
Apocalyptic visions can take many forms, from atomic to cosmic disaster, from cautionary tale to sardonic despair, comets, asteroids, plague. But when it comes to the end of the world, one expects fire or ice, bang or whimper. Rarely does this genre focus on the area between those two extremes, as it does brilliantly in Don McKellar's Last Night, a wry tale exploring the effects of the world's imminent demise on a group of characters in Toronto. No panic ensues, no looting, no gnashing of teeth or elaborate schemes to forestall disaster. Well, that may be happening somewhere, but certainly not in Toronto. Here the radio counts down the top 500 hits of all time. The clock ticks by the evening hours while daylight fails to wane. Everywhere, people prepare for the end in ways that range from the mundane to the winsome. The principal action throws together Patrick (McKellar), a dejected young man who plans on spending the end alone listening to music, with Sandra (Sandra Oh), whose plans to spend the end with her husband (David Cronenberg) are thwarted by lack of transportation. Meanwhile, Patrick's friend Craig (Callum Keith Rennie) is fulfilling every sexual fantasy he's ever had. Love the one you're with is the message here. The real star is the tone of the picture, which is distanced and ironic and masterfully maintained throughout. Sarah Polley and Geneviève Bujold appear in supporting roles. It's the directorial debut of actor McKellar (Exotica, eXistenZ), who also scripted The Red Violin. --Jim Gay

Last Night Reviews:
Apocalypse Canadian-style
2009-10-26 - I saw this when it originally came out; I think actually it was at a film festival. I was thinking that it was originally commissioned as part of a project called "2000 Seen By..." in which a whole bunch of directors around the world made films about the end of the millenium, but I don't see any info on that. I think it must have premiered in Chicago at the same time as some of that series which I saw, thus the confusion in my mind after 11 years. At any rate, it has a "millenial" feel even if the exact date isn't mentioned, and I liked it then and even more on this viewing.

It's not just the end of the world as we know it, it's the end of the world period, but we (mostly) still feel fine. Or at least...resigned and OK about it. Director-writer Don McKellar plays Patrick Wheeler, a successful architect who lives alone in a high-rise in Toronto, and at the beginning of the film he's going to a "Christmas" dinner with his family, who he's been somewhat estranged from it seems; after that he plans to return home to await the end, which will occur at midnight. As I said, the date isn't given, but it might be around Christmas-time, though it's warm and the sun is bright in the sky throughout the night. Presumably the sun is about to go supernova and burn the planet up - certainly the only logical explanation for a warm, bright and green Toronto in the winter!

Patrick soon runs across Sandra (Sandra Oh), trying to get back to her husband to be with him at the end. Her car has been wrecked by vandals and she lives on the other side of town; public transportation and cabs are nonexistant at this point. Patrick doesn't really want to help her at first, quite selfishly (but understandably if you think about it) wanting his end to be what he had designed - but through events and his own deeper selflessness he becomes involved in trying to help her through most of the rest of the film. We also drop in on Craig (Callum Keith Rennie) who is trying to satisfy as many sexual fantasies as he can before the end; Duncan (David Cronenberg), a gas company manager who is personally calling all of his customers to with them farewell; a mother and daughter (Arsinée Khanjian and Chandra Muszka) sitting desolately on an abandoned streetcar, and a few other disparate characters, most of whom in the end wind up having connections to each other that weren't at first apparent.

Canadian cinema fans will no doubt recognize a lot of people involved in the film - with the Cronenberg connection and Khanjian (Atom Egoyan's wife and principle collaborator), Oh and Sarah Polley (as Patrick's sister) among others it has the feeling of a "Canada's greatest hits" cast, but I think that's entirely appropriate - the film as a whole takes a very different approach to the looming catastrophe than something like ARMAGEDDON, released the same year. I don't know how conscious McKellar was of this, but the film strikes me in some ways as a rebuke to the notion that we have to approach the end - of life or of the world - with anger, violence, madness - or with the notion that we can save ourselves no matter what the scientists tell us. Although plenty of fear and negative emotions and violence exist in the film, we're also constantly reminded that many Torontians are approaching the end with grace and dignity, and somehow in this film that actually seems logical and realistic. I could be reading too much into it I suppose, but through the various coincidences and the spectacularly wonderful - yet wholly predictable, if you really divine what the film is reaching for - ending, we see people searching for, and often finding, hope and forgiveness and love in the face of the end. Certainly a very different sort of "armageddon" than the ones we typically see in the multiplexes.

The film wouldn't have worked at all if not for the two leads; at first I wasn't crazy about Patrick, who seems a little too snobbish and bitchy to be quite believable at the end of the world - but eventually both through the revelation of his past and McKellar's general underplaying he becomes more compelling. Oh is terrific, and for once her long, sad face is utterly appropriate; in the finale she is absolutely radiant when at last she finds the strength to smile and to feel something other than loss, if only for the last second.

Although some of the secondary characters seem like they could have/should have been fleshed out a bit more to me (Sarah Polley's in particular) and there's a bit of a rushed quality, overall this is a beautiful and sensitive and warmly humanistic film, a low-key corrective to the notion that we have to approach "the end" kicking and screaming, something that's all too rare in the context of it's subject matter - and in general. Nice soundtrack choices as well.


Two hours well spent.
2009-01-06 - Creative, original, quirky and imaginative. Not a formula Hollywood product. Great performances -- this was the first time I ever saw Sandra Oh, and I was stunned at how expressive she is. It will have you talking about it for hours, and haunt you for years. If the last fifteen seconds of this movie don't put tears in your eyes, then you have no heart.

Going gently into that good night?
2008-11-19 - Great movie by Don McKellar, who also plays the lead. The movie was part of a 1998 world wide project inviting directors, as the millennium was drawing close, to make a movie related to an "end of the world" subject. 1999 a network broadcasted this movie and I caught it halfway through and was on the edge of my seat until it finished, so I didn't stop until it became part of my movie collection which at that time was a bit of a challenge.

In view of the subject mentioned above, the title of the movie is an exact representation of what it's about. Say, the last 6 hours of everybody on this planet have started, what would you do with the time remaining? The nice thing about this movie is that it doesn't try to be some Hollywood spectacle, but handles the subject from the individual view point of a group of people spending their last few remaining hours.

It's not explained what's causing the end of the world. All the viewer gets to know is that it has been known to the world for a number of months and all you visually notice is that in the evening hours the light outside remains bright as day, a comet perhaps, but it doesn't really matter.

The character that connects the people portrayed in the movie is that of Patrick Wheeler (McKellar), who really had decided to spend the remaining hours on his own, but that plan is not really working out. First of all, there are his family duties and even on this very last day he's not spared the painful rituals that these entail, including an impromptu Christmas celebration during which his mother unsuccessfully tries to emotionally blackmail him into staying with them.

The next scene gives us a mood picture of Toronto with lots of background noise of people partying and rioting, smoke plumes rising from buildings and finally zooming in on a woman (the marvelous Arsinee Khanjian, known from many wonderful Canadian movies like Exotica and The Adjuster) who is waiting in a bus with her daughter for a driver who will obviously never come and refusing, in spite of her daughter's pleas, to leave, not even when a group of people start their attempts of toppling the bus.


Meanwhile in a supermarket a woman (the wonderful Sandra Oh, yet another Canadian film diva) is doing some proletarian shopping for a bottle of wine, surrounded by looting people. She's carrying and anxiously holding on to a small case and as she leaves the store finds her car upright against a street light. She tries her luck with aforementioned bus, but as no coherent response is forthcoming to her queries, she gets out again and resumes her search for transportation.

Meanwhile Patrick Wheeler returns home after a narrow escape from his parents' house and on his doorstep finds the transportation denied woman who asks him the use of his phone as she wants to call her husband to inform him of her problems returning home. First Patrick Wheeler is hesitant but finally he gives in to the desperate pleas of the woman. Her subsequent attempts to reach her husband prove in vain and as the time to get to him before the end has passed Patrick offers her to stay with him until the end. She agrees providing he on his part agrees to a request of hers which completely stuns him and will shape his final hours in quite a different way as he might have expected.

The relationship that develops between them those few remaining hours are central to the movie, even though there are some sideline stories. At one point, in a final attempt to get the woman home, to go to one of Patrick's friends. This friend turns out to be in the final hours of a 'project' that's been going on for the last few months which entails having all his sexual fantasies fulfilled, including a sexual encounter with his former high school French teacher, played by Geneviève Bujold. We also become witness to Sandra Oh's husband, the one she is so desperately trying to reach, played by nobody less than David Cronenberg, wrapping up final business affairs for the gas company he manages, before going home where the days events catch up with him. His secretary, who has a crush on her boss, in her final hours decides to give in to a long harbored desire.

All the goings on are musically framed by a radio broadcast featuring a dj's personal all time favorite top 500, a nice touch.

I really don't want to give away anything more, except that this is a great movie that really drew me in and it's astonishing ending, followed by the wonderful end credit music, moved me to tears. A true gem of a movie.


It Makes You Think But....
2008-07-28 - Interesting movie to watch. I gave it four stars because any movie that makes you think about the subject matter is a good movie in my book. This movie does this. However, the one thing I have a problem with in this movie are the songs played on the radio to the people facing "the end". Would this REALLY happen? What heartless DJ would play songs to their certainly depressed sad listeners like "the last song" and "I didn't get to sleep at all". Is that helping anyone? Seems to me they would play upbeat songs like "joy to the world" or Van Morrison's "Moondance". The music they played on the radio was the only thing I found NOT believeable in this film. No DJ in their right mind would play alot of music they played on the earths "last day". The titles of songs SEEM to fit, but in reality they do not. As the Titantic was sinking, the band DID NOT play "the death march", they played upbeat music. Other than the music, a good film that makes you think.

a hidden gem..
2008-05-24 - you may have missed this movie when it came out several years ago. Now is your chance to watch it. It's the end of the earth (that is the basic plot), but what is interesting is how the many characters in this film react to this fact, and how they try to find meaning in the closing moments of their life. The cast is outstanding, the screenplay is sharp.

Sarah Polley and David Cronenberg (yes the director) and the other actors give great performances- the sub-plot weaves in and out of several characters as they interact with one another and try to tie up the loose ends of their lives before the end.

This movie also has the added benefit of making the viewer appreciate the value of his/her own life and enjoy each moment to the fullest.