Director: Carling Enstzen
Writer: Carling Enstzen
Cast: Carl Welch, Vivien Monory, Vanessa Bailey, Carling Ernstzen, Byron Lyons
Running time: 19mins
The weight of our own mortality can be leave us feeling paralysed; a deer staring blankly into the headlights of oblivion. The Last Rehearsal does something wonderful, in trying to shake us out of our frozen state – with the humble reminder that while none of us can dodge death, that’s not what living is anyway. Living is the choice to step forward and to act, to make the most of the time given to us, and to use it to create for, communicate with, and comfort other people. To discuss the loathed universals we must all suffer through, and to help each other still make the most of our brief glimmer of existence in the meantime.
Carling Enstzen’s film follows John (Carl Welch), a veteran actor in the process of managing his own curtain call. After a fateful meeting with his GP, John assembles a team of performers to breathe life into a play he has written – noting each was hand-picked by him for a particular reason. We follow John and the team through several rehearsals, as their confidence grows and his health declines – using the last of his energy to coach them in the art he has devoted his life to.
Welch, appropriately, is the stand-out performer here. Since Enstzen’s script hangs almost entirely on the shoulders of John, casting the role well was absolutely crucial to getting this to work at all – and in every single way, Welch lives up to what is required. The warmth of his smile, the emotional weight to his directions (his delivery is filled with kindness, but also a hint that if you are late for rehearsal, he still has more than enough energy to straighten you out), and the tearful silence he is moved to when watching his cast with pride. It is all you could ask for.
To that end, Enstzen might be open to a small criticism, in that I don’t feel she makes the most of what Welch is bringing to proceedings. Director of photography Jonathan Nicol only seems to have been allowed fleeting moments to really close in on the face of this film’s central character – and when we do catch a glimpse of Welch in close-up; a thousand-mile stare painting a picture of someone who knows they are on the brink of the void; or eyes welling up, moved to tears both by the beauty of the performance, and of being anything at all for these last days; we feel moved in a way the rest of the film cannot live up to. The absence of slowness and silence, of areas of peace where we can think about what is happening, and how we feel, would have been a great addition throughout the film.
As it is, the breakneck pace only relents in the final act – when the actors sit in silence, around an empty chair. And while that is a deeply moving moment, it is emotionally something else – absence felt among those left behind, rather than a final reckoning with an unknown beyond.
The film’s final edit also detracts a little bit from what would have surely been the key moment where that silence could have come from. One of the actors performs a monologue from John’s script, about a bird that never sees “tomorrow”, because it can only live in the present. It is a monologue which is chopped into pieces that serve as the story’s prologue, and a segment in the middle, during a rehearsals montage. But this seems important enough as an interaction that it might have made for a more compelling narrative arc: we could have seen John coaching the actor, initially slow and insecure, before getting the performance out of her: the one that delves into the truth of what he has written, and moves him to tears. And if we had been delivered that without a flashback/forward format, but simply reached it when it was time, it might have felt earned, and like we had been on a journey too.
As it is, for a film which finally encourages us to step forward, that is a little bit of a missed opportunity. Especially as when we step forward to do something, it is rare we will nail it first time – but all the more important that we persevere.
The Last Rehearsal still remains a poetic rumination on life and mortality, one which provides an important space to think about the importance of not going through this experience passively – but to use our time to find joy in ourselves, and help others to find it in the process. That’s a wonderful message from the world of independent cinema – and to encourage others to give this art-form a shot, to tell a story which is authentic to them, and which in turn will touch and enrich the lives of those around them.