If the end of the world was just hours away, would New Yorkers still be able to get takeout? Yes, if Abel Ferrara’s mind-bending “4:44 Last Day on Earth’’ is any indication.
In the film, the lead characters — writer Cisco (Ferrara regular Willem Dafoe) and painter Skye (Shanyn Leigh, the director’s real-life girlfriend) — get a delivery from a neighborhood Vietnamese eatery in their gadget-filled Lower East Side loft as they await the apocalypse, predicted for 4:44 a.m. the next day.
The couple make love (on the floor) for possibly the last time. Strawberry-blond Skye splatters paint on a large canvas, and Cisco goes up to the roof to survey his neighborhood, then visits his brother. “Al Gore was right,’’ anchor Pat Kiernan says on NY1, setting the tone for the movie. “But by the time we realized that we had already ruined the planet, there was no going back.’’
Ferrara is a one-of-a-kind filmmaker who for years has turned out cult classics such as “The Addiction,’’ with Lili Taylor as an NYU vampire. He refuses to sell out, content with making quirky low-budget films devoid of special effects. In fact, he said at the 2011 New York Film Festival that even if he’d had a large budget, he would have made “4:44 Last Day on Earth’’ exactly the same way. Are you listening, Hollywood?