REVIEW: Last Days Here

Bobby Liebling is a goggle-eyed, manic-smiling metal singer with finger-in-the-socket hair and the devil’s own smile. He’s also got a crack habit, a smack habit and is so badly deluded about things crawling under his skin that he picks himself until he bleeds. He lives with his parents (his dad was a high profile US national security bureaucrat) in a “sub-basement” and eats nothing more than pizzas. Only in his late 50’s when the film was made, he looks 80, with the shuffling gate of lunatic and the gaunt, pale pallor of a dead man. But, to many, he is a God; founder and leader of the 70’s cult metal band Pentagram. Bobby Liebling is about to go one one of two journeys: he will die or he will become a star again – a perfect plot for the era of The Voice, X-Factor and Australia’s Got Talent where the dramatic curve of the Zero who becomes a Hero is de rigueur.  Last Days Here follows him to see where he ends up.

The central tension of this ultimately warming film is between Liebling’s stoic fans – and one in particular, Sean Pelletier aka“Pellet” – and his own maddening self-destruction. In the beginning, it seems the latter is winning and in this way, Last Days Here toddles along as a fairly traditional tale of a rock star’s mania and self-centredness and his descent into emptiness and death. He thwarts the best efforts of Pellet to get him back on track via a re-connection with his band again and again. Liebling frustrates, but his charm and heart shine through still. His physical state is horrible to see, but oddly, hard to turn away from.

A glimmer of hope delivered by an incongruously young and attractive girlfriend for the ravaged Liebling descends into farce as he goes back to his old ways and she walks. This sets off a spiral into neediness and pathos and he ends up in jail. When he emerges after the efforts of the never-say-die Pellet, he actually looks better for better behind bars. At least he got some food.

From here things take an upward trajectory and Last Days Here ends on a high note. Of sorts. It’s hard to see past the fact that Liebling is a selfish wreck who has manufactured a seemingly dysfunctional relationship – with a few curls and twists – and someone who needs a stage to feel human and who has to be loved to death by his unfathomably loyal fans to be bothered to live.

Yet, who has the right to cast the first stone? Few of us would stand the scrutiny of a 6 year doco shoot – that’s the effort directors Don Argott and Demian Fenton apparently put into this project – and come out clean and shiny? Add to that the fact that Liebling doesn’t appear to give a shit about how anyone sees him, and courageously – or foolishly – allows the cameras to capture his most vulnerable moments, and you have a very real doco to say the least.

It’s hard to see any directorial glorification of Liebling’s life-threatening lifestyle choices, but Liebling still, for all his peccadilloes, emerges as a loveable softy. There is a study yet to made to explain the common contradiction of hairy, black-clad, heavy metal men, with their satanic lyrics, dark chords and guttural singing who are just big softies who want to love and be loved; There are too many kindly bikies and gentle Goths out there for bleeding hearts like Bobby Liebling to be seen as anomalies.

Perhaps the real hero of the whole story is Pellet. As Pentagram’s Number 1 fan, his efforts to rehab Liebling and get the band going again are extraordinary. His patience is Biblical and his willingness to cop all manner of let-downs from Liebling and to maintain the faith is as interesting a story as Liebling’s and is rightly given plenty of room in this film.

But Pellet too displays worrying signs. Is his fandom simple dedicated admiration, or does it draw more directly from the root for the word ‘fan’, ‘fanatic? One human being shouldn’t take so many blows in the service of another and his story rather underlines the sense that the hero/hero worship dynamic has its victims on both sides of the equation.

Last Days Here tells a relatively simple story well, largely in the mould of Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008) with perhaps a nod to a kind of real-life Spinal Tap (1984), and should be appreciated for the lack of any trickery or directorial showing off. But, the sub-text appears to be that aiming for celebrity, even a small dose of it, is a dangerous game, played only by the ignorant or the foolhardy.

THE SKINNY

Title – Last Days Here
Makers -9.14 Pictures
Couch Time – 91 Mins.
How to Catch it – DVD and VoD
High Point – Narrative arcs aplenty
Low Point – A little static and conventional in style