BEST MOVIES OF 2021 (Lists)

[Chris Knipp]

LAST AND FIRST MEN

The Stunning Feature Debut and Cinematic Swan Song from
Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson
Narrated by Tilda Swinton

Now Playing Exclusively at Metrograph In Theater and At Home
Expands January 14

I've watched and admired a screener of this but haven't been able to review it; but for lovers of film as art it has a special place as a kind of refined still-image-based black-and-white sci-fi comparable to Chris Marker's wonderful Le Jetée.

From the review by Roger Luckhurst for BFI's Sight and Sound:

This 70-minute experimental film brings together a daunting conjuncture of elements. It is a Jóhann Jóhannsson film, conceived, shot (with cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen) and scored by the Icelandic composer, but left incomplete at his death from an accidental overdose in 2018. Jóhannson is principally known for his minimalist film scores, which process orchestral sound through tape loops and electronic glitches, and in particular for his soundtrack for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016), where the music is integral to creating the strange elegiac tone of that melancholic encounter with aliens bearing unusual gifts.

Last and First Men is a non-narrative meditation in the same mood, but is closer to Jóhannsson’s concept albums, which combined the holy minimalism of Arvo Pärt or John Tavener with science-fictional bleeps and gurgles typical of the synth gloomsters of the late 70s New Wave. Given this post-apocalyptic mood, it is inevitably hard to avoid the trap of bending the film around the knowledge of Jóhannsson’s early death, turning its reflections on end times into a last testament.