•
Rating: There is a lot of symbolic content in this science fiction film by Spanish directors David and Alex Pastor, winner of multiple awards at the 2014 Gaudi Awards and premiered worldwide in Barcelona on March 20, 2013.
'Los Ultimos Dias' is a film that focuses on man and his limits and fears and how these can become real obstacles, conditioning his life and preventing him from making 'courageous' choices at decisive moments. Perhaps it is a film about how we no longer believe in anything, assuming this is true, starting from ourselves and consequently in others, and how this reason leads to a disconnection, a severe and critical fracture within our social system starting from the individual and then the more or less wide social contexts in which this individual moves. The family, the job, the city we live in, our country, the entire continent. The world.
We are in Barcelona in our current times and follow the story of a young computer engineer, Marc (Quim Gutiérrez), who is experiencing a period full of uncertainties largely due to his character, which keep his life stuck at certain points. Things seem to worsen with the arrival of the new personnel manager, Enrique (José Coronado), a very strong personality hired by the company with the clear purpose of reducing the current workforce. This results in further pressures and anxieties for the young man, who clearly enters a crisis until his relationship with his partner Julia (Marta Etura) dramatically deteriorates due to their differences on an important issue such as having a child.
One morning, the couple confronts each other violently on the subject, they argue, as can happen to many people during their daily life, and then say goodbye because he has to go to work. Once at the office, Marc, feeling guilty for having upset her, calls her and discovers that she is pregnant, but she doesn’t want to talk to him because she still harbors anger and resentment towards him. At this point, he leaves his job, uncaring for once about the pressures imposed on him at work, to reach her, but as soon as he steps outside, he realizes he cannot breathe in the open space and laboriously returns to the building he works in.
Something is happening in Barcelona, in Spain, and in the rest of the world. The true reason is unclear, but people can no longer go outside. What initially seemed like a kind of collective phobia, perhaps amplified by the revelations of the mass media, turns out in a few days to be a true catastrophe of global proportions that brings the world and society as we know it to ruin.
The narration begins a few months after the events I have mentioned, which are recounted through flashbacks that unfold throughout the first part of the film. In the 'present' time, Marc has been holed up in the offices of the company where he worked for months. He wants to reach Julia, from whom he has not heard because, after all, all communication systems and channels have been interrupted, but he has not had the courage to go out until now and wouldn’t even know how to reach her, not even traveling underground in the subway tunnels.
When he discovers, however, that Enrique, the personnel manager apparently hired with the mission of proceeding with his dismissal, owns one, he strikes a deal with him and ventures into the suburban area of Barcelona in search of his home, where he hopes to reunite with Julia.
It will be an adventurous journey in a completely distorted and altered reality where closed and suburban spaces have become a kind of shantytown where no rules apply anymore, and the only law that counts is the law of survival.
During this journey, the two, united by the harshness of the world they have to face, unexpectedly become friends, and Marc realizes that all he wants is to be with Julia and be by her side when she gives birth. In the end, when he has almost completely lost hope, he discovers instead that he can succeed but only by fighting against himself and his fears in an act of extreme confrontation with this widespread 'evil' that has destroyed the whole world we live in.
The film - it is evident - strongly emphasizes our great fears, perhaps the most hidden ones that we are ashamed to talk about, which are fueled by the lack of confrontation and sharing, and somehow, telling the story of the protagonist, invites us to challenge them and challenge ourselves: literally to go out into the street and fight. A message that is shown on one hand as the end of a ritual and spiritual expiation journey and on the other as a kind of real resistance, which must be a demonstration of strength that reminds you of heroic and mythological deeds like Ulysses who, tied up, resists the sirens' song. In the sense that there is still a test to overcome, but to do so, you must have strong motivations, great courage, and also the right push (in Ulysses's case, the desire for knowledge, supported however by the inability to move because he is tied up; in Marc's case, the great love he has for Julia and the awareness that at some point he cannot live without her) that sustains you along the way.
It may appear, as I have described it, as a film that eventually foresees a characteristic happy ending, and the end of the story itself is not exactly dramatic, but it leaves room for even deeper reflections on the meaning of life in its entirety and meant not only as a relationship between people but also as 'love' in a broader sense and almost as a last bastion safeguarding the species. Eventually, a sequence of brief scenes shows us the evolution of things over the years, and we witness the miracle of humanity's typical ability to regenerate and improve generation after generation. A positive message for the future definitely, but for the present, it leaves a big question mark and a gigantic gap to which this film seems incapable of providing answers in the face of this apocalypse that we all suffer and which in our many solitudes we help to fuel and spread like a lethal virus.
Loading comments slowly
