Last and First Men (2021)

More A/V essay than movie, Last and First Men challenges, mesmerizes, unsettles.

Humanoid inhabitants of a a far-future Earth on the brink of extinction reach back to tell us the story of our species’ many incarnations. Tilda Swinton’s disembodied narration layered over black-and-white footage of former Yugoslavia’s brutalist spomenik sculptures and Jóhann Jóhannson‘s haunting soundscapes demand meditation: on human nature, evolution and extinction, time’s unfathomable depths, and the meaning of existence.