As you may or may not recall, there was some kind of turn of a millennium in the not too distant past. Presumably not, as it’s recently become apparent that we’ve all forgotten about that whole ‘Troubles’ thing, despite the GFA only coming into effect like a month prior. Anyway, yeah, there was this vague sense of this being a major world event, although if we’re being honest it was all a bit arbitrary. Calendars, man. What’s up with them?

‘How’s this relevant’, you might wonder? Well, most of that wasn’t really. In those heady days of the late ‘90s, French production company Haut et Court came up with the idea of commissioning a bunch of films on the subject. The impending millennium that is, not the Northern Ireland situation or the vagaries of time. These films would be produced all over the world for a truly international view. There are only ten though, so not that comprehensive an international view. Also, one of the countries was America, which I’m sure must’ve had had dozens of films on the subject by then. (To be fair, theirs was by Hal Hartley, who doesn’t exactly have the major studios banging on his door trying to give him money to make, I don’t know, Amateur II: How Isabelle Got Her Groove Back.) Anyway, this one was from Canada and is seemingly the only one people particularly care about. That’s right, people don’t seem particularly bothered by the Hal Hartley one. This is perhaps because Last Night is one of the longer ones; most are about an hour; as well as perhaps the only one to not actually bother with the actual millennium thing, not exactly anyway. The time of the story is never mentioned at all, instead the impending big event is the end of the world, which is happening at midnight on the day the film takes place. So… not actually mentioning it is one way to get around the whole “will people want to watch angst about the year having three zeros in it after said year?” problem.* I mean, in reality, I assume there probably are… god knows I’m pretty curious about ‘em, but this is the most available of the lot. Hell, it seems like it’s the only one to see a proper release in the U.K.; I vaguely suspect that Film4 wound up with it as part of a package deal when investing in the same producers’ The Red Violin (1998). The BBFC have ratings for a couple of the others (Hal Hartley’s The Book of Life and Walter Salle’s and Daniela Thomas’ Midnight), submitted in 2006 by a mysterious ‘Online Rentals Ltd.’, though I can’t find any further trace of a (presumably rental only) release beyond them being the only two (aside from Last Night) to have a page on Cinema Paradiso’s site (they’re both listed as unreleased however). Kind of surprising really, as most (if not all) of them have fairly prominent directors attached.

Anyway, it’s Toronto and the world ends tonight. This is not news, it’s the inevitable of which everyone has been well aware for a while now. Whatcha gonna do ‘bout it? NOTHIN’! By the end of this film, all the characters will be dead, presumably, if nothing else. This isn’t a spoiler, unless you for some reason had spent the whole film expecting them to avert the apocalypse despite none of the characters really making any moves to do so. No, instead we follow the ensemble as they await their doom. As a bonus, the apocalypse setting also acts as an excuse to shoot the whole thing in the daytime, despite being set at night as the title suggests. It’s alluded to that it doesn’t get dark anymore, but it doesn’t care to elaborate as to what exactly is the cause because that's not really of any importance. Anyway, as such, the film instead takes itself a burnt look, with dark shadows and saturated colours. With constant reminders of the film’s ticking clock, its disconnect with the increasingly bright contrasting colours becomes oddly ethereal and kind of hauntingly beautiful.

The main throughline of the film, if we’re to identify one, belongs to Sandra (played by Sandra Oh, in a Genie winning performance) who is on a quest to get across town to her husband (David Cronenberg) so as they can fulfil their suicide pact. A plan that fate seems determined to thwart at every turn, as the Earth’s impending consumption in fire or whatever is in fact a bad time to be trying to drive through a major metropolitan area, as people are taking the whole thing a bit strangely, would you believe? Mopey widower Patrick’s (Don McKellar) plans to die alone in his flat go similarly awry as he finds himself helping her towards her goal while trying with little success to avoid getting sucked into the orbits of others. These ultimately form the main core of the film, while around the periphery, Patrick’s parents are engaging in a passive-aggressive get-together, his sister and her boyfriend are intending to partake in the literal party to end all parties, Sandra’s husband is stuck working the last day at the gas board, and their friends are trying to live out their fantasies, wild or otherwise, while there’s still time. Sandra is the character with the most in the way of conventional plot, though that may be overselling it a bit, hence hers being the arguable ‘main’ thread of the film, the most developed and least indulgent, compared to the more naval-gazing outer threads. Not indeed that there’s necessarily anything wrong with indulgent naval-gazing, and if it can’t be done during the end times, really when else could one get away with it? This film manages it, as the cast of characters are all quite well realised and understandable in their motivations and desires, and their attempts to cope with the film’s central conceit renders it a fairly fascinating watch.



*Despite this, just looking at how everyone’s dressed and the technology at hand is rather a giveaway as to when the film was made.