20 Years Later, Gus Van Sant’s ‘Last Days’ Still Haunts the Biopic Genre

20 Years Later, Gus Van Sant’s ‘Last Days’ Still Haunts the Biopic Genre

The biopic has long dominated our culture, with more released each year than the last. They often succumb to typical Hollywood functions, taking place over the subject’s entire life, yet still managing to sanitize the subject’s darkest parts. In refusing to fully engage with the depths of the figures these films examine, the biopic genre acts as a perpetual limbo, keeping its subjects bound to a neat and tidy box that threatens to never be fully…