Customer Reviews

Last Thoughts

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Watched 'Last thoughts' last night and really enjoyed it.

The premis of the movie is a grandson finding the stories of his grandfather years after he has passed on. The grandson, film-maker Kevin Henry, takes some of his grandfathers written notes and recorded stories and explores the land, visiting the places where his grandfather's stories took place.

Robert Henry, the grandfather, took to hopping trains as a teenager in the years before and during the Great Depression. From the Mid-West he visited far places like California and Washington state. The stories, told by the grandfather's own voice in audio, relate the times, the people and events, that come from another world as much as another time.

Kevin Henry often films the places and landscapes where these events happened, showing how things have changed, and maybe alluding to the viewer, how things may not have changed that much. In the light of the recent economic downturn, we hear of a time when things were probably much worse. People did bad things, but still the good in people drew us together.

Some of the landscapes that Henry shoots are stark and lush all at the same time. It is almost like a travel-documentary, with current cinematoghraphy, but a soundtrack from the 1920's and 30's, reaching far back into the past. Kevin Henry interjects a little of his own modern narrative throught the video and audio of people he meets in the various areas his grandfather once moved through: homeless living off the land, workers in various lines of work, Native Americans who fish and chant.

All in all, I enjoyed the stories, the beautiful footage of places I have never been, and a sense of the time when Henry's grandfather had his adventures.