HIS LAST MINUTES
Overview
"His Last Minutes" is a short experimental film that was released in early 2018. It focuses on the last 3 minutes of a young man who is on deaths door, dealing with guilt, regret and sorrow as he relives a crucial moment that forever changed the life of is and his two friends.
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The film has been shown on several film festivals across the UK and won awards for "Best Picture", "Best Edit" and "Best Actor".
The Idea Behind The Film
What does one see or experience when he is about to die? That is the main question that drove me to create this film. Death is a fascinating subject, mostly because there is no way to show or prove what happens to a person who is about to die or has just died. We are simply unable to know and properly understand what there are going through in their mind. From the very beginning “His Last Minutes” was aiming to try to visualize and show an idea of a person’s last minutes before death.
This core idea developed more and more until it became the now finished film: a study of death, guilt and the workings of the human mind.
It is a three-minute insight into the mind of our protagonist who aside form battling with his own imminent death, also has to deal with the guilt of being responsible for the death of his friends.
Music and visuals are the most important aspects of the film, with the colours becoming more and darker and grey as the protagonist is approaching death. The music itself is there to show the inner feelings and emotions of the protagonist without dialogue, it shifts and transforms according to the situation and takes the place of what dialogue and voiceovers would achieve.
What little there is of actual dialogue is repeated over and over again as the two friends start accusing the protagonist. The same phrases repeated without end to hammer the guilt inside his head.
The main approach was to handle all these subjects with the most minimal of visuals and audio, creating a very intimate and emotional piece that draws the viewer into the mind of the protagonist, experiencing his last minutes together.
A soundscape of suffering - The music
Having nearly no dialogue, a lot of the emotional weight within "His Last Minutes" comes form the musical score, which ranges from quiet piano pieces to haunting ambient noises.
As the story progresses, as The Dying Man is thrown deeper into the corners of his wandering mind, the music becomes more and more distorted and uneasy, before finally giving him the resolve of a quiet, peaceful strong note in the end.
As the music was such an important part of the project, I created a lot more than just 3 minutes to create a vast soundscape that explores the different emotions The Dying Man goes through in great detail.
This complete musical journey will be released in the near future.
Until then, the 3 minute version can be streamed on this site.
Haunted by guilt - The Dying Man
The nameless protagonist of the story, credited as "The Dying Man" is a young man responsible for the death of his two friends, while also being on the deathbed himself.
As his mind wanders, we see the events of the fateful night unfold, as well as his attempts to escape that memory.
"Choices I wish I could reverse" was the theme that was exaggerated to the most dramatic outcome - the loss of a friends life due to ones own actions.
The Dying Man is responsible and at the end of the film, he is forced to accept that responsibility to be able to move on. He is relatable in the way that all of us have been in situations (although not as fatal as ones own death), where the guilt and regret haunts us to the point where we just shut off that memory until it starts creeping up on us again, forcing us to deal with it all over again.
I didn't"t want The Dying Man to have dilaouge. In fact he only speaks one line throughout the film, during his final attempt to get away from the painful memory. He conveys his feelings, his emotions through his recations alone, strengthend by the music playing in the background.
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