A story about nothing less than the evolution and extinction of mankind

The Ice­landic direc­tor Jóhann Jóhanns­son calls his film LAST AND FIRST MEN a dystopi­an sound play. It can be seen at the GoEast film fes­ti­val in Wies­baden (or at least online until April 26, 2021). The fes­ti­val her­alds the film as both a doc­u­men­tary and a dra­ma, and the mix of fic­tion­al and doc­u­men­tary forms also applies. „Lis­ten patient­ly: We who are the last men, earnest­ly desire to com­mu­ni­cate with you”, we hear Til­da Swin­ton tell from the off in her incred­i­bly calm­ing voice. The beguil­ing sounds, the slow track­ing shots and zooms, the rough, grainy black and white, the bru­tal­ist, reduced con­crete archi­tec­ture that we see pull us into the film imme­di­ate­ly and par­a­lyze us. „I am speak­ing to you now, from a peri­od about two thou­sand mil­lion ter­res­tri­al years in your future,” announces Til­da Swin­ton, not to announce any­thing more sig­nif­i­cant than the immi­nent extinc­tion of human­i­ty.

Eigh­teen gen­er­a­tions of human species have trav­eled the solar sys­tem dur­ing that time. Well, at the end of time, the last spec­i­mens of the human species look back on their his­to­ry. Til­da Swin­ton remem­bers the past decades, cen­turies, mil­len­nia and more. In sum­ma­ry, she states: There was no par­adise. But there was con­stant change, with times of joy and times of sor­row. And the per­ma­nent dan­ger of los­ing our liveli­hoods.

Jóhanns­son suc­ceeds in cre­at­ing an irre­sistible, tempt­ing work, a kind of doc­u­men­tary film about every­thing, about the entire his­to­ry of mankind, not in exces­sive details, but in the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the lev­el above, which final­ly sums up the prin­ci­ple of being human. This broad view, the widest of all views, forces us to be hum­ble, reveals our insignif­i­cance. LAST AND FIRST MEN is also some­thing like the final fic­tion­al film, the all-inclu­sive sci­ence fic­tion film that encom­pass­es all the sto­ries of human­i­ty.

“We live through all the mis­takes of thought and action that humankind has ever made,” Swinton’s voice sums up our fal­li­bil­i­ty. And for a moment, all the hard­ships of every­day life seem so insignif­i­cant to us.

LAST AND FIRST MEN

Doc­u­men­tary | Dra­ma | Ice­land 2020

72 min

Direct­ed by Jóhann Jóhanns­son

Avail­able online until April 26, 2021 at the GoEast Film Fes­ti­val

https://online.filmfestival-goeast.de/