On April 8, 1994, the body of Kurt Cobain was discovered at his home on the shore of Lake Washington, his bloodstream full of heroin. Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, the official cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Cobain’s death was tragic, distressing – but not much of a surprise. His fame was predicated on a poetry of failure.

“I feel stupid and contagious,” ran the chorus of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the anti-anthem that made him an icon. “I Hate Myself and Want To Die” was the working title of Nirvana’s final album. His last words, scrawled in a suicide note, were these: “I’m too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don’t have the passion anymore, and so remember, it’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

“Last Days,” the erratic, moody new film by Gus Van Sant, resurrects the final weekend in Cobain’s life via Blake (Michael Pitt), a character “inspired by” the fallen rock star. Almost nothing is known of Cobain’s last days, still less of what went through his mind. That suits Mr. Van Sant’s purposes just fine. His blatantly experimental “biopic” couldn’t be less interested in conventional biography or normative picture -making.

As in “Elephant,” his goal isn’t to explain but to immerse. “Last Days” tells you next to nothing about the historical figure Kurt Cobain. Instead, you will come to know, deep in your bones, what it might feel like to inhabit the consciousness of a man nodding off into oblivion. Psychology is replaced by the expressive capacities of the Steadicam. Psychodrama is rejected. Sound design is supreme. Texture is everything. Mood is all.

Set in and around Blake’s crumbling mansion at the edge of a forest, “Last Days” is a sort of haunted-house movie. Blake wanders from room to room, slumped in enigmatic reverie. Elsewhere in the house, his useless entourage (Lukas Haas, Asia Argento, Scott Green) remain sequestered in their own private limbos. Various interlopers intrude: a Yellow Pages sales agent, a pair of Mormon twins, a record executive (Kim Deal), a private detective looking for Blake.

How many days are we looking at here? Impossible to tell. Space and time distend. Ellipses shatter continuity, and the narrative shards are reassembled into overlapping patterns. Any event – the playing of a record, the making of lunch, an entry, an exit – can begin in one place and end in another, looped back on from a new vantage point. The movie nods off, blacks out.

Another filmmaker would use plot, dialogue, and characterization to tell us what’s going on in Blake’s head. Mr. Van Sant prefers to externalize his condition as the stuff of the film itself. “Last Days” can seem outrageously opaque, unless you’re willing to empathize with the poignancy of a pan, the grandeur of a zoom. Whether or not a tracking shot is a moral act, in “Last Days” they’re all profoundly emotive.

Aural space more than complements the visual; it expands the entire movie’s dimensions. Every now and then, Blake says something intelligible. Otherwise, he’s all mumble, a frayed, lumpy panel in the intricate patchwork of Leslie Shatz’s sound design. Musique concrete by Hildegard Westerkamp scatters percussive oddities through the generalized ambient drone. Every sound is massively amplified: Trains in the distance whoosh as if on tracks laid down in your ear canal; water trickles, gigantically, from hidden sources.

Virtuoso stuff, but to what end? Mr. Van Sant has lately been setting himself a difficult task: to film the unfilmable, articulate the invisible, address the unspeakable. Both “Elephant” and “Last Days” are public meditations on private horrors. Their formalism isn’t the cop-out of an aesthete, but a necessary complication, the by-product of an exquisitely empathetic artist gazing into the abyss. Strange to say, but “Last Days” is one of the most respectful films ever made about suicide, and a quietly magnificent tribute to Kurt Cobain.

“Last Days” completes the director’s trilogy on death – and continues one of the great aesthetic reversals in American movies. Say what you want about these films – “Gerry” is a joke; “Elephant” sublime – they are all highly original, at least per the definition of originality Charles Olson borrowed from his friend Edward Dahlberg. Originality, he wrote, is another name for “highborn stealth … the act of a cutpurse Autolycus who makes his thefts as invisible as possible.”

Mr. Van Sant has stolen principally, ingeniously, and invisibly from Bela Tarr, maker of voluptuous experimental narratives. His masterpiece, the ostentatious epic “Satantango,” applied principles from cubism, minimalism, and structuralist cinema to seven hours of bleakly amusing miserablism. Mr. Tarr, Chantal Akerman, and the tradition of European experimental narrative provided the backbeat for Mr. Van Sant’s new groove, but even without their example he was already eager to play more challenging music.

The director’s recent move to the margins was compelled by a career that began there, then devolved into complacency. Movies like “Mala Noche” and “My Own Private Idaho” gave voice to marginalized cultures through oppositional aesthetics. Then Hollywood called, and Mr. Van Sant replied meekly: “Good Will Hunting,” “Finding Forester.” It now seems that “Gerry,” the least purposeful of his new work, was a necessary purgation, a scorching of the earth to prepare for new growth. What flowered in its wake is a rare bloom indeed.

***

“Hustle & Flow” is the compulsively watchable, rather dubious story of a Memphis pimp made good. DJay (Terrence Howard) gets by selling weed and the sexual services of Nola (Taryn Manning) from the back seat of his car. With one ho pregnant at home (Taraji P. Henson as Shug) and another getting uppity at the strip club (Paula Jai Parker as Lexus), he’s not exactly living large.

But when he hears that Skinny Black (Ludacris), a local musician gone super-bling, is heading home for a Fourth of July barbecue, DJay decides to try his hand at “crunk,” a subgenre of Southern hip-hop. With the help of an old buddy (Anthony Anderson), a goofy white guy (DJ Qualls), a couple of hos, and a montage or two, he lays down “Whoop That Trick,” an infectious anthem to keeping your “bitches” in line.

Sex(ism) sells: “Hustle & Flow” is famous for it’s multimillion-dollar sale at Sundance. It’s not hard to see why. As formulaic as “Bad News Bears,” this cookie-cut underdog story is full of pungent local flavor and tasty beats. Writer-director Craig Brewer has a keen eye for detail, an obvious rapport with actors, and an affably relaxed storytelling style. Mr. Howard gives a thoughtful, textured performance, uplifting material that could easily come off exploitative or naive.

What To See This Week

“Do the Right Thing” (Anthology Film Archives, 212-505-5181)

“Bad News Bears” (general release)

“Monumental: David Brower’s Fight for Wild America” (Quad Cinema, 212-255-8800)