Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh (IFC Films)

Samuel Beckett Abel Ferrara is not. Subject matter that characterized the Irish poet and playwright’s work—death and its ultimate meaning—hasn’t exactly been as elegiac in the New York director’s gritty career. His latest film far too often finds an angst-ridden Willem Dafoe alone on his Manhattan rooftop dreading an impending apocalypse, his hands reaching toward heaven in a last act of despair. But Dafoe, skilled though he is, looks more like ham than Hamm, the protagonist in Beckett’s existentialist masterpiece Endgame. Luckily, the scenes between Dafoe’s character, Cisco, and his younger girlfriend Skye (Shanyn Leigh) are slightly better, as the two of them discuss the significance of their relationship, ironically amid news reports of the end of the world.

I use a relatively forgiving Beckett pun here (if you’ll recall, he also wrote Krapp’s Last Tape) because I was pleasantly surprised by 4:44 Last Days on Earth. Sure, Ferrara waxes philosophic here far too much, with the dreadful aforementioned rooftop sequences, pseudo-Eastern humanism barking from the couple’s TV all night long, and the couple’s goodwill toward a Chinese delivery boy (still working on the eve of the earth’s destruction? Now that’s what I call service). I found, though, that the relationship questions struck on a powerful intellectual concept. If the couple only has another few hours to live, what does anything mean anymore?

At a time when Skye and another woman in Cisco’s life—his ex-wife (who appears only via Skype)—are at their most emotional, a sense of irony only increases as the film winds down toward its end. The two women uncharacteristically push Cisco to explain himself. But if he loved one more than he ever did the other, what should it matter? The point is that it does matter. To go out with a sense of truth is important, and as Skye discovers surprising things about Cisco in their final hours, that sense of meaning is shattered. Whatever she thought her life meant was completely uninformed.

Ferrara is always in touch with the vibe of New York City. This is no exception, though he portrays the Lower East Side a bit in its grittier days of the 1980s, when junkies lined the sidewalks nightly. The unique electricity of New York City, that grotesque combination of good and evil—is well rendered. Ferrara is an authority when it comes to Gotham, and iconic local newsman Pat Kiernan even appears several times proclaiming on a newscast that the end is near. “Al Gore was right,” he says, though never quite revealing what exactly it is that will do us all in. Global warming is more of a slow burn, and one that many refuse to see coming. Ferrara, however, would rather we stare death right in the face. Of course the film’s a downer, it’s about the end of life on earth. But when you think about it, who better to give it to us than Ferrara?