To say of any film that the image is merely of secondary importance is a bit absurd, yet with Neil Ira Needleman's Last Request, the statement is markedly accurate. Though the pastiche of images Needleman works with are riveting--from shots of the feet of people dancing to those of a spider clinging to a leaf--the story told entirely in voice-over stations itself as the point around which all other filmic elements revolve. Were it a poor story, Needleman's work would be of little interest, but as it is, his tale of a dying man is so detailed with desperation and humor, it stands out as a minor masterpiece.

A classic story of father-son dissociation, Last Request chronicles a disgruntled narrator, who on his deathbed, pleads that the images his artist parent left him should be destroyed. Taking a job as a businessman in fierce reaction against the ambiguity of his father's work and existence, the narrator cannot comprehend the beauty his father captures. The films, painting and writings he completes make little sense to the narrator, but that belies the implicit yearning on the narrator's part that the works have meaning. It's a film as much about anger as about love, how those two emotions can intertwine to such an extent that one cannot be removed from the other.

In its 12 minutes, the narration almost plays as a song, the words and images weaving into the inseparable, and thereby, the experience of seeing the film demands a fall into the unconscious. It's as if a lullaby were being sung in a soft but halting and scratchy voice, and while awareness of its lyrics found a home thematically, it's melody was all the more readily at surface. In a way, it's hypnotic and repetitive--much like the entire experience of life seen when looking backward, or perhaps, it could be guessed, like the experience of death when looking forward.

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