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Rating: Despite an apparently banal and overused title, this film by Milanese director Corsini is a true masterpiece of independent cinema, showcasing an extraordinary narrative ability and visionary awareness rarely seen in much more famous directors.
Set in an almost deserted, nebulous, rarefied Milanese suburb, the film depicts the last day of a man who has obtained information about the city's destruction due to a nuclear attack. Silent and absorbed, the man (whose identity and profession are not explained) lives these hours of waiting without tension and observes the desolate urban landscape of an autumn morning as if accepting the inevitability of the event.
The sense of anxiety, however, becomes immense for the viewer who already knows the outcome of the story: at the beginning of the film, the protagonist writes in a notebook a sort of personal memoir reporting what is about to happen. The anxiety is all the stronger as one sees how that corner of the city already seems struck by some disaster: it is deserted, gray, distant... the atomic explosion can only make tangible the theatre of death and absence that permeates everything.
The choice of lighting is impressive, as within the apartment where the man lives, it seems as though no natural light penetrates from outside. Yet the windows are open to the morning. Thus, a strong contrast is created between the interior and exterior environments.
Moreover, there is a disorienting approach to urban reality, where the enormous building resonates with accumulated noises but produces nothing identifiable. The action takes place in an incomplete silence, which seems to evoke the ruin to which the city is destined.
In the end, the man leaves the apartment and heads to the vehicle he parked under the building. Around him only a few uncertain, distant figures, who already seem like ghosts in the mist. In the car, the man seems to hesitate, but then starts the engine and departs for an unknown destination, with teary eyes.
In the last scene, a boy is seen gazing through the French door of a small terrace and sees a bright trail descending from the sky. He then smiles and pauses to watch in wonder.
It is impossible to put into words, however, a film entirely of images and atmospheres. Produced with limited means and entirely focused on lights and settings, "The Last Gaze," by the director's own will, was distributed only among close acquaintances. A comprehensible and justifiable choice in today's Italian cinematic landscape, which even in the independent circuit has seriously compromised any seriousness due to the inevitable opportunism that reigns in this country.
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