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Reviewed by:
  • Last Supper
  • LuAnne Roth
Last Supper. 2005. By Mats Bigert and Lars Bergström. 58 min. DVD format, color. (Bigert and Bergström. Stockholm, Sweden.)

A Google search of the phrase "the last supper" yields over two million hits. Many of those hits, of course, refer to the biblical story of Christ's last meal and to Leonardo da Vinci's famous depiction of it. Such a search would also reveal some twenty-three films by the title, and a brief reflection on some of these films may be illuminating. La última cena (The Last Supper, directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea in 1976), for example, tells the story of a pious eighteenth-century Havana plantation owner, who proselytizes to twelve of his slaves during the Holy Week, inviting them to a reenactment of the biblical Last Supper, during which he uses religious analogies to convince his guests that "perfect happiness" is possible through slavery. Evidently his slaves do not buy this rhetoric, however, and they revolt. Two decades later, Stacy Title's The Last Supper (1995) appears. Following the slogan, "Eat . . . drink . . . and be buried," this film follows a group of "idealistic, but frustrated, liberals [who] succumb to the temptation of murdering rightwing pundits for their political beliefs" (http://www.imdb.com, accessed February 20, 2009). And in 2005, Saigo no bansan (The Last Supper), directed by Osamu Fukutani, was released, which features a plastic surgeon who transforms himself from cowardly liposuction doctor to charismatic and sexy icon of the rich and famous. He accomplishes this feat, actually, by eating women. With close-ups of the sizzling flesh being prepared (in gourmet fashion), accompanied by mouth-watering sound effects that compete with the best "food films," even the most avid anti-anthropophagite may be tempted . . . just a little.

Though the above fiction films belong to the genres of drama and horror, there is another similarly titled film—Last Supper—a documentary perhaps more dramatic and horrifying than the fictional accounts described above. Truth, in this case, is not only stranger than fiction; it is more unsettling as well. It is precisely for this reason that I believe this particular Last Supper should be required viewing for scholars of folklore, foodways, religion, criminal justice, and end-of-life rituals.1

Ironically, this documentary by the Swedish team of Mats Bigert and Lars Bergström was released in the same year as Fukutani's film of the same title. Rather than depicting gourmet cannibalism, however, the documentary Last Supper explores the worldwide tradition of serving a last meal to prisoners condemned to death. Unlike Fukutani's Last Supper, in which one human literally consumes another, Bigert and Bergström's work exposes an actual tradition that seems to have existed for as long as the death penalty itself. In both cases, the victim is killed, but unlike the sensationalism of cannibalism, the foodways tradition of the last meal given to prisoners facing the death penalty is not often discussed. While this contemporary tradition may stem from ancient funeral rites, as the film suggests, today it may seem "as absurd as the punishment it accompanies."

Filmed in 2004 in Japan, Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States, the film contains interviews with a motley crew of individuals ranging from former executioners, death-row guards, and prison wardens to death-row prisoners themselves, former death-row prisoners (who manage to avoid execution at the eleventh hour), as well as a judge, a prison chaplain, and even a food scholar who has studied obituaries of executed individuals for mention of the last meal. The filmmakers' role in these interviews is well hidden; that is, we hear no questions asked. Many of the individuals being interviewed sit behind colorful displays of food, presumably what they might order for their own last meal (were they ever in such a regrettable position). Interestingly, none of these interview subjects eat the food set in front of them.

One of the most interesting things about [End Page 105] Bigert and Bergström's Last Supper is the peculiar way in which information is relayed, where interview footage is interspersed with a series of...

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