The Last Century (2005)
By Sam Taylor-Wood
“Sam Taylor-Wood, by Ossian Ward ‘A man sits in a pub as his cigarette slowly burns. The end.’ This is not an existential joke or indeed a bit of minimalist theatre by the great Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, but a description of one of Sam Taylor-Wood’s newest films, The Last Century, 2005. The scene, while recalling her earlier film works involving numerous characters, is entirely static apart from the involuntary blinking, twitching and barely-visible breathing of four motionless actors, all of whom are arranged around another, central figure as if in a group portrait painted by Rembrandt or Caravaggio. The contrasting light and shade of this typically gloomy, wood-panelled East London pub matches the tenebrism or chiaroscuro of Caravaggio’s The Calling of St Matthew of 1599-1600 in which a group of tax collectors, huddled around a table counting their money, are disturbed by the figure of Jesus beckoning one of them to become his apostle. In both works, the strong shafts of light highlight the faces and poses in similar ways, yet the dramatic moment of surprise and uncertainty frozen in Caravaggio’s dynamic composition is at odds with Taylor-Wood’s agonizing continuation o…
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