First and Last

I think I heard about Last and First Men (2020) on a random film podcast. Someone mentioned it in passing (Josh Olson?) on some random podcast and I was intrigued. Short summary: Voice-over narration based on the Olaf Stapledon story accompanied by slow, black and white shots of Soviet brutalist monuments. Directed and scored by Johann Johannsson.

And that's really almost all I can say about it. The story is told by Tilda Swinton, as a transmission from millions of years in the future, telling a little about the future history of the world, and the comping apocalypse (for them). The visuals are grainy, 16-mm slow pans of concrete sculptures and buildings from the Soviet era. Some could be stills, except for clouds moving in the background. There are no humans, few animals, not even many plants. Mostly concrete and sky. 

The music is very Johannsson: atonal, eerie, organic. It ties the whole thing together. 

I haven't read any Stapledon since maybe high school, but remembered his stories as very cosmic in theme, while down to earth in prose. It was well suited for this kind of meditation. I liked watching this a lot, although I treated it as more of a music video than a story