Last Days Here Review
By David Kempler
The Good Old Days
I never heard of the heavy metal band Pentagram, or at least I don't remember ever hearing about them. However, judging by Don Argott and Demian Fenton's documentary, "Last Days Here", a whole lot of people did hear of them and revered them. The star of Pentagram, and the star of this doc, is Bobby Liebling, their former lead singer.
When we first meet Bobby, he is living in the basement of his parents' home in Germantown, Maryland. You have seen very few men who appear in worse physical and mental condition, and watching him felt like waiting for a pre-corpse to take the final leap to corpse. His parents are a well-intentioned but enabling pair that allows Bobby to shoot heroin, smoke crack, and do lots of other damage to himself. He has been in this state for decades, and it is hard to imagine that this is heading towards a happy ending.
Into the film steps Sean Pelletier, a super-fan of Pentagram who is determined to see his idol reclaim his spot of heavy metal greatness. Sean befriends Bobby and seeks out the old members of the band in the hopes of re-assembling them. While Sean is presented as a benevolent soul, clearly there is a bit of wanting to be associated with a star, because he doesn't have that much going for himself anyway. He is in no way a bad guy, he just isn't very self-aware about his own motives.
Sean finally succeeds in helping Bobby clean up, but the inevitable fall comes swiftly. This plays out repeatedly, until both Bobby's future and stardom remain far in the distance. It is this tug of war between Bobby and himself that propels "Last Days Here".
Argott and Fenton have created a fascinating look inside Bobby and they present it in a way that, no matter your feelings towards Bobby, you have no choice but to care at least somewhat about how it will all turn out. By the end, you will have been tossed back and forth so many times, it will feel akin to being on a roller coaster. The key is that this roller coaster is both fun and rewarding. "Last Days Here" contains good and bad days, but none of the days are boring, and some are just plain amazing.
