Araki's LIVING END

The films of director Gregg Araki are some of the most poigniant looks at our society that have ever been created. They almost remind me of the brutally honest portrait created by Larry Clark's KIDS in how in-your-face and no-holds-barred the films are. THE LIVING END was Araki's directorial debut, and what an excellent film it is. Made for next to nothing, the film has become sort of a cult classic, and opened the doorway for Araki's other films.

THE LIVING END is the story of two homosexual twenty-something guys, who embark on a road-trip across, seemingly, the most desolate and bleak areas of the south-western United States. The two are HIV positive, and essentially realize, in typical Araki fashion, that they just don't care about their life at this point, and decide to hit the road and leave their lives behind.

The voyage is anything but a final gasp of life for the two, however, as they seem to learn more about life and their existence the further they get on their journey. Araki creates an almost spiritual journey for the two, as they venture through some amazingly barren landscapes in their voyage of self discovery. Not to say that the trip is a piece of cake, as there is constant feuding between the two, as Luke, who was picked up as a hitchhiker, uses a gun to cause trouble, murdering people and breaking the law whenever it is possible. Ultimately, they begin to realize that maybe life isn't that bad, and the people back home really do miss them.

This is a Gregg Araki film, so you know that there is going to be a lot of bizarre occurances. Luke initially is picked up by two crazy middle-aged women, who seem to want to turn him into their sex toy, but eventually argue themselves into forgetting about it. All of Araki's trademarks are evidenced here, in his first film, as we have the themes of apocalypse, non-traditional sexual identity, violence, and lots of offensive language all within the framework of the usual bizarre, but undeniably powerful social commentary.

Since this film focuses exclusively on two openly homosexual characters, Araki provides us with the mid-90's social background for these two. There's plenty of anti-homosexual messages that are shoved in the face of the two main characters, and Araki gives us plenty of insight into what it was like to be one of these guys. Araki also provides an odd setting for the film. The characters find themselves in open desert stretches at one point, the next they are in an urban jungle of grafitti and nasty characters. The feeling of apocalypse, which was the main idea of Araki's three subsequent films starting with TOTALLY F**KED UP and continuing on to THE DOOM GENERATION and NOWHERE, is also highly evidenced in this one, mainly due to the seemingly hopeless situation that the main characters find themselves in.

THE LIVING END is a great low-budget masterpiece. It has all the elements of the later Araki films, and plenty of its own charisma and intrigue. This film gives a pretty good background to Araki's "Teen Apocalypse Trilogy" that followed, but is not really necessary for watching those films, however THE LIVING END is a very good film, and well made considering the budget. The only downside from my point of view was the openly gay characters, and the subsequent man-on-man love scenes. I was put in a somewhat uncomfortable position during these, but again, that's probably what Araki intended for these scenes. He always has some sort of bizarre sexual-identity theme in his film, and the film gives an undeniably good look at this lifestyle in the mid 1990's. If you can handle this story element and are not easily offended, then I would highly recommend this one.