“Obviously we poison them. I wouldn’t want them to have to know they were being poisoned. I mean,
it's bad enough to die. I wouldn’t want their last thoughts to be, ‘Hey, I’m being killed by a liberal!’”
THE LAST SUPPER
1997
Dir. Stacy Title
Screenplay: Dan Rosen
With: Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan Penner, Coutrney B. Vance, Josen Alexander, Nora Dunn, Charles Durning, Bryn Erin, Mark Harmon, Bill Paxton, Ron Perleman
What is it about:
This is a film about Sunday dinners, right and wrong, and tomatos.
Five grad students invite a guest to their homes every Sunday for dinner and discussion. Well, it was a dark and stormy evening and after an argument with their guest, they kill him. Over the course of the following week they come to the conclusion that they can make a difference in the world by killing those who deserve it - those who can make the world a better place if they are dead. There is a sub-plot that plays a very minor role in the film about a girl that is missing.
Cephas’ notes and spoilers:
“You’re not God. You can’t just decide who is good and who is evil; who lives and who dies!”
“But what if you kill somebody whose death make the world a better place?”
This is just one of the interesting questions observed in this very interesting film. An interesting transformation happens between the friends through the course of the film. There are some excellent lines in the first half of the film. The friends decide what to do when they kill their first guest at the beginning and when one suggests that it was just an accident and they should report it, another says, “Oh, yeah: ‘Officer, um, we had a guest over for dinner, he was rude, so Mark stabbed him in the back!’” And Mark is amazed that he could kill someone. He just stands there with his arms folded and declares, “Well! I’m a murderer!” There are a few interesting twists and their guests are just outragious ranging from a priest who believes that, “Homosexuality is a disease and AIDS is the cure.” to a senior in high school who has started a campaign through the local papers to stop sex education in the schools. I was stunned in a couple scenes from the absurdity and gall some of these people have. And through it all I found myself laughing at the same absurdities! Like OMC sings, “How bizarre, how bizarre!” You’ll love the ending. There is seriously no other way they could have properly ended it all. I could say more but I don’t want to give much away.
Cephas’ Rating:
A MUST SEE!!!
This is a great independant film that proposes to the viewer a few questions such as: “How can we tell what is right and wrong? If we attempt to cause ‘right’ by destroying the ‘wrong’ are we not in turn ‘wrong’ ourselves?” It also proposes the question of, “You are in Austria in 1909. There is a young artist named Adolf Hitler. He is not a killer, he is a kind boy. Do you kill him knowing what he will become?” What would you do? Me? I’d give him some Schnaaps. (I’m just not gonna say from which bottle.)