The Last

This is quite an original film, actually a film of ideas. A lot of talking goes on, seemingly as a vehicle both to deliver information and then to discuss it and share views. The topics are mainly religion, specifically Judaism, Catholicism, and belief (or not) in god. Another topic is death, including euthanasia, and another is the Holocaust.

Unfortunately, during lengthy soliloquies, nothing much happens other than the camera focusing on the face of whomever is either talking or listening. The best of these "speeches" was the longest one, by the character Claire, the great grandmother who turns out to be a Nazi. Actually, one thing I found fascinating was how as she narrated her story to her great grandchildren (who are young adults), and to me, the viewer, she was transformed. From an intelligent and somewhat artsy grandmotherly type, she became a German Nazi who even after seventy years embodies the hideous character of the Nazi mentality. The other characters having to deal with their feelings caused by the duplicity of Claire, along with the implications of her going from being a Jew to a Christian (and Nazi!) becomes the theme of the film.

It's pretty sad when the scene on a movie poster is the best and only decent part of a film, but that was my impression with "The Last."

New York's Central Park provides an attractive backdrop to the initial footage in this production, and it gives you some hope that the movie might be heading in an interesting direction. But the film goes seriously downhill from there.

To its credit, "The Last" is one of the few movies in recent memory to star a nonagenarian, the attractive actress Rebecca Schull. I celebrated this fact till I saw that Ms. Schull's screen time was marked by stultifyingly dull and discursive dialogue. Indeed, this movie is numbingly talky, without giving the viewer a reason to care. ("The Last" leaves "My Dinner with Andre" looking like an edge-of-your-seat popcorn thriller.)

Ms. Schull's performance is all right, but I found most of the acting in this film to be uniformly bad, particularly when it came to a younger female character who plays a loud-mouthed and self-satisfied convert to Judaism. I wanted to run away.

I caught this movie at the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan, which usually offers some stellar works that aren't easily located elsewhere. You can bet this is "The Last" time I'll be checking this movie out!

Absurd plot line, bad script, bad acting, and just a hideous movie.

Don't waste your time watching this. Even if the idea of the story is interesting, the execution is really bad.