Critic Reviews

This experience is one of rare, absolute immersion.

A ravishing 70-minute audiovisual essay on human mortality, extinction and legacy — all the more poignant for being its maker’s final creative statement.

Guided by Jóhannsson’s ethereal score, this dazzling apocalyptic immersion blends cosmic 16mm black-and-white images of Yugoslavian architecture with a deadpan Tilda Swinton voiceover, resulting in a profound lyrical rumination on the end of days.

Last And First Men is a stunning work of beauty and horror.

This is Jóhannsson’s first and last film, and its hard not to recognize that this is a director who arrived fully formed as a visual artist. His dreamy combination of sound and images, the editing and pacing, and his use of Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s grainy 16mm cinematography combine with strange potency.

Halfway between fiction and documentary, Last and First Men is a visionary work about the final days of humankind that stretches the audience’s ability to imagine not only an immense time frame reaching over billions of years, but huge steps in human evolution.

Last and Future Men is a haunting film of melancholic beauty, but hidden within are stubbornly persistent elements of hope.

The push and pull between gradual buildup and apocalyptic rupture allows the film to infiltrate the mind and recalibrate our sensitivity to time.

Johannsson’s stark, uncompromising passion project is always striking to the eye even in moments when the narrative lulls.

An unconventional and imperfect first work of a career that would have been fascinating to watch unfold, Jóhannsson’s images are just as strong as his typically excellent, haunting musical composition.