The Last Supper
Stars Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish
Directed by Stacy Title
Reviewed by Natasha Simons
The Last Supper is an engaging black comedy and political satire targeting aspects of contemporary US society — the extreme right wing and left-leaning liberals.
One stormy night, a household of graduate students invite a guest to dinner. The guest voices his belief that the Nazis had the right idea and "if" the Holocaust ever happened, it was a good thing. When a Jewish member of the household presses the point, the guest draws a knife on him and a struggle ensues in which the guest is accidentally killed by one of the students.
After the initial shock, the students decide to bury their dead guest in the backyard and plant tomatoes on his grave. Still smarting from the guest's accusation that liberals are all talk and no action, the students answer positively to the question: "If someone at your dinner table is a potential Hitler, do you poison his schnapps?". They begin a crusade to rid society of its most "undesirable" elements.
Guests to the dinner table include members of the anti-abortion Right to Life organisation ("shooting doctors is necessary to save lives"); the religious anti-gay lobby ("homosexuality is the disease, AIDS is the cure"); the men's movement and more. With each guest, the tomato patch in the backyard expands and flourishes.
The dialogue is a fast and sharp political minefield, playing on inconsistencies in the students' views. While there is some substance in the debates, the film presumes a left-liberal audience largely convinced such right-wing views are wrong.
The students presume that "great men" are alone responsible for history's crimes against humanity, rather than influential leaders of massive, discontented social forces. The Last Supper is therefore less about changing society (through political struggle which involves masses of people and changes attitudes) and more about the desire to murder people who don't have the same viewpoint.
The last guest to the dinner table, a right-wing television personality, reveals the real message in The Last Supper: that extreme views on the right and left are what keeps society in the middle. Summed up by director Stacy Title: "I think what people find so disaffecting about politics in America right now is that, whether on the right or the left, people are so self-righteous, divisive and messianic. I wanted to make a smart comedy about what happens to a group of men and women who really want to change the world and tragically, comically, fail."