explanations

in luc bessons - the last battle, the future is bleak.
sand has covered the earth, and only part of high buildings remain, covered in a vast desert, the remaining parts of towns remain populated by adults only.
surface water is contaminated and the only water can be found flowing out of deep underground.
women are kept captive by men.  the isolated settlements are centered around water locations.
the people no longer speak, they communicate with violence towards gaining water and territorial rights and control over the women.  in group situations an alpha leader controls the supplies of water and the women, keeping hold over the communities.
food supplies are dwindling canned food goods, human flesh and fish which rain from the sky during the deluges.

this was the future for luc besson in 1983, his first forage into the world of feature films.  It is filmed entirely in black and white with virtually no dialogue, the parts of dialogue portrayed being barely comprehendable.
luc was teamed with jean reno and pierrie jolivet -  actors who would together with besson and form an enduring working relationship.  ( leon {leon the professional} , the fifth element, le grand bleu.
Eric sierra, whom besson met in early 1980's composed the music for the film, music which seems drawn from this time, - blade runner had shown a year earlier and 1984 would see the premier of terminator.  The 70's were ending and the 80's had long begun, new generations stepped forward and new sounds evolved from the swansongs of the old.  besson chose black and white as the empty palate of which the graduations deduct little from the opposing forces of positive and negative, the yin and the yang, good and bad.  "is it real? is it a dream? is it a fairytale?" besson

in the early 1980's film critic and experimental film partisan raphael bassan coined the term 'cinema du look', of which besson and a few directors of the 1980's-1990's were part.  The term described them as a movement focusing more on style with a minimalist plot.  le denier combat would epitomize this, with its lack of verbal language and raw communication of survival and desires, desires for sex and water,survival and controll in a world with seemingly little else to focus.

besson grew up taking his material from comic books and many of his popular movies were developed from sketches made when he was still in his teens.  a monchrome style would be more than a passing fad, he would revisit this device in movies such as Angela, also set in the future.  A style that draws us in with its fantastic scenery, scenery that forms the escape from the suffocating reality of the future.