How would we spend our final hours on Earth? And what does how we choose to die vis-a-vis say about how we have chosen to live?
For quintessentially indie director Abel Ferrara, 4:44: LAST DAY ON EARTH is a thoughtful (and provocative) experiment, which takes on visceral immediacy.
With the planet on the verge of extinction, a New York couple (Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh) cycle through moments of anxiety, ecstasy, and torpor. They sink into the havens of sex and art, and Skype last goodbyes in a Lower East Side apartment filled with screens bearing tidings of doom and salvation.
The film becomes one of Ferrara’s most potent expressions of spiritual crisis. An apocalyptic trance film, 4:44 is also a mournful valentine to Ferrara’s beloved New York. It’s the director’s first feature to be shot entirely in the city in over a decade.
Made 10 years after the September 11 attacks, the movie represents a haunting vision of doom in the lower Manhattan skyline.
Abel Ferrara
Running time: 82 minutes
