Irreversible: C/D

(I haven't seen it so can't comment; just trying to link ya up)

Aesthetically though, Noe's camerawork is excellent. Incredible claustrophobia independent of the setting.

I enjoyed it, but I'm not especially "critical" about films (I enjoy most movies - whatever that means). This one seemed to succeed on a nihilistic illustration level much more than 'Requiem for a Dream', a similarly pile driving movie.

I got to pat myself on the back for thinking "this whole thing is so Kubrick" only to see the poster at the end instead hit me over the head with it. I also enjoyed the camera work and settings very much, spinning darkness, red passages, spinning party, long Metro line, apt spin etc etc.

Belluci's line about the red tunnel breaking in two seems to me somehow profound - I'd like to know what others think about how premonitory dreams (what her character was writing about) fit in with the Time's Arrow narrative arc, etc.

I really liked the score very much. The vomit inducing bass warble in the 'Rectum' really worked.

I fully expect a full-on ILE panning, which I'll likely enjoy too! have at it.

Oh yeah, so all my engagements with French film and books this year have been brutal and obsessed with anal sex - Whereas musically, it's all my usual lush house and Alizee. What's Le Dealio?

Here's what I said about the film on the other thread:

"Yes, it was the wrong man the guy killed at the beginning (or the end)of the film. I guess this was the directors way of saying "revenge is never justified." Apart from this (quite shallow) moral I think the film was kind of pointless. Sure it had a huge visceral impact, but the grossness, the camera style and the "story-going-backwards" gimmick (stolen from Memento) didn't manage hide the fact that there was little of substance here. I liked the director's last film (Seul contre tous/I Stand Alone) more, at least that one had a bit of social commentary in it."

Also, may I add that the flick is quite homophobic; the gay club is depicted as some sort of Hell's bottom. Also, when the protagonist is beating the other guy's head to pulp, the people around them are just going: "Yeah! Cool!" Those sick S/M homo bastards! Mind you, I always thought sadomasochism was about inflicting pain within tolerable limits, I wouldn't imagine any S/M enthusiast shouting "Yeah!" when a guy is beaten to death.

anyone else see this? I haven't been able to get it out of my head all day. I'm having difficulty thinking about which of my offline friends I can even recommend this to. Mom&Dad - forget it. Ex? - nope. Co-workers - uhuh.

Good direction on an elemental level, but the last couple scenes, what a local reviewer called the payoff of the film, was overlong and mostly uneventful.

That said, it's also pretty stupid, gross, brutal (like life, I guess the apologist would say). But saying it's "just" stupid and brutal is maybe letting the movie pigeonhole you, which is one of the things I think it wants to do, one way or another, and seems largely to succeed at. I'm just as perplexed (and OK, yeah, intrigued) by someone simply dismissing it as by this arty-smarty grad student I know's love for it, which seemed to hinge on being titillated by the shame of experiencing inklings of turned-on-ness during the rape scene. He's like, "Same for you?"

I was like, um, no, not really....

A problematic piece open to all sorts of criticism--the homophobia, the misogyny--I think, but not "just" dumb or pretentious. Definitely something to be reckoned with, though I'd never recommend it, still don't know how I really feel about it, and probably won't ever watch it again. I can't imagine how I'd judge at all, however, if I hadn't seen it in a theater ... pretty crucial.

I'm reading The Wasp Factory at the moment, and Frank's observation (80 or so pages in) that revenge is a purely selfish act done for the appeasement of one's own soul and ego rather than for some sense of justice seems to fit very well with the 'mistaken revenge' idea.

Not sure what to think.

well duh

I guess I know I should be worried about this being the case because I started to get nervous and jittery listening to "Rectum" for the first time on headphones in bed one night. Knowing that the horror-show air-raid tones were connected with "that scene" gave me an extreme feeling of discomfort.

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This year, humanism and nihilism existed side by side on movie screens and, consequently, on my top 10 list. (Granted, that may say more about my taste or personality than the zeitgeist.) Watching DOGVILLE, 21 GRAMS, MYSTIC RIVER and KILL BILL, VOL. 1, I kept thinking back to IRREVERSIBLE.  It was rather depressing to see a critical pileup on a film of such accomplished style and moral urgency. I’m not kidding about the latter point: its deconstruction of macho revenge fantasies held plenty of political relevance on the eve of Gulf War II. But you’d never know that from reading reviews that dwelled upon Gaspar Noe’s silly statements in the press kit or made mistakes about a character’ssexual orientation. Nor would you realize that the final flickering shot holds out the possibility of transcendence before birth or after death.  To think that its haters  could have spent that time serving the gay community by making Carson Kressley dartboards! (For some reason, it was much better received on-line than by professional critics.) The notion that revenge is a dish best not served at all may be a trite “moral,” but Clint Eastwood drew some of the best reviews of his career for saying the same thing. As for the issue of homophobia, the fistfuckers at the Rectum ultimately come off looking better than the straight guys. After all, the director places himself among them, jerking his CGI erection.  They’ve found a way to harmlessly ritualize the violence that Noe sees as integral to masculinity. For some critics, implicating gay men - admittedly, strongly implicating them - in a general critique of machismo equals making the most homophobic film ever made.

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Truly one of my favorite online critics.

It doesn't prove that revenge is bad, as so many people are saying. Where does this idea come from?

Um, because he kills the wrong guy? But I agree with you on the film, it's just an artsy piece of moralism that people read too much into, kinda like "revenge is bad, mmmkay?" or "world is a shitty place, mmmkay?". That someone compared it to Requiem for a Dream is apt, because that film too, under all the visual trickery, is a pretty one-sided morality play. I'm not saying these two aren't worth the watch (they definitely are), but after the fist visceral impact has faded you realize there isn't that much underneath it. Interestingly enough, both Gaspar Noe's and Darren Aronofsky's previous films (Seul contre tous and Pi, respectively) are ultimately the better ones, because they have both the cinematic flair and the narrative substance.

As for the issue of homophobia, the fistfuckers at the Rectum ultimately come off looking better than the straight guys. After all, the director places himself among them, jerking his CGI erection. They’ve found a way to harmlessly ritualize the violence that Noe sees as integral to masculinity.

But the point exactly is, that these S/M dudes don't act the way normal S/M practitioners (who indeed have "found a way to harmlessly ritualize the violence that Noe sees as integral to masculinity") do: they cheer when a guy is visibly beaten to pulp, which makes them look pretty loathsome. From what I know of S/M, the whole point of it is to cause only as much pain as the masochist party likes, so seeing someone beaten to death wouldn't be any S/M fistfucker's wet dream. This, however, is what the Rectum scene implies.

Also: all these haters saying it's trite: well, perhaps, but no more so than 'Taxi Driver,' 'The Searchers'...

Granted, I'm not saying it IS enough (after all, Requiem for a Dream seems pretty much dull now, and even it looks about 10x as accomplished technically than Irreversible), but it's also usually enough to allow that the film is nowhere near the worst film of the year or whatever...

And, I've only seen about five or six Ford films, but The Searchers is not slam-dunk Ford's best. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon needs to be more widely seen, I think.

(x-post)

"uh, no i wouldn't"

That the film (to a degree) depicts homosexuality (via Rectum) as hell and heterosexuality (via monogomous, child-bearing, married life) as heaven is an implication I hadn't previously considered. It does pit one against the other...

But to your point, I, too, am unwilling to paint the film in definitive broad strokes of black & white (i.e., S&M depiction = blanket generalization via S&M club and its patrons = Irreversible condemns both = Noe is a homophobe). It's a leap critical thinking won't allow me to take.

Although I hear/read/see conservatives making that leap all the time.

Isn't it ironic?

Que?

Perhaps movie dialogue isn't the most efficient way to smear?

There's a question that's been on the tip of my tongue for the last 48 hours.

It was awful because...

I just watched this and it is absolutely brilliant. I didn't know what to say on coming here, but N1ck Southall has fairly nailed it above. I'd like to add that the soundtrack is superb, the murder/rape scenes work, and that the second half is even more shocking, even more back-of-your-seat, even more wrenching than the first. In fact, they were beautiful. Those final few shots are astonishing. That last image, the whirling static, speeding out of visual comprehension as the music is slowly killed in the background, was revelatory.

The key to the film, really, is the slipping out from a state of brutality, a state where the gangster's law and the rapist's law and the avenger's law is the common law, to a state of reflection, tenderness and love, where ethereal and whimsical concerns such as dreams and fancies dictate one's actions. When this slip is made, the effect is to pollute, to violate these whimsies, these tendernesses. To destroy them. Sorry if this is all completely obvious, but the whole way the film was shot enabled the former state to engulf the latter even as the latter completely swelled the screen. I mean, it was almost straight romance by the end. The romance was amazingly tender.

Another interesting aspect of the film was the three-way relationship. I think this was the film's real dilemma, not the act of revenge. You think she'll choose Pierre. Then you realise she can't. Then you realsie she's pregnant. Then you realise it can only be this way. All the while she has been battered to a pulp and raped while her man lies in an ambulance and the man who cannot actualise his feelings for her heads off to prison for murder.

Again, I'm not doing justice. The cinematography was superb. The dialogue was fraught. The scene in the gay club was tense as fuck. In many ways, the rape scene was the most boring scene of the movie.

Best moment: "I can't feel my arm!" Too right you can't. :D

What would a PC depiction of an S&M club look like?

I'm still waiting to hear Tuomas's take on this question.

Can't think of any movie examples, but I think Ralf König's comics have quite good depictions of actual S/M practices. Anyway, my point wasn't just that the club wasn't depicted in a PC way, rather than that it had little to do with such clubs at all, because Noe used it and the S/M gays merely as symbols of utter hell and immorality.

Btw people who liked Noe's films should check out his wife's debut feature Innocence. She uses some of the same visual techniques as Noe (she's also the editor of Noe's movies), but Innocence is more original and thematically more interesting, and lacks the shock tactics and the ultimate pointlessness of films like Irreversible. Some discussion here:

Innocence (the 2004 French film) - SPOILERS!

This movie is revolting in every way and stupid. Plz do not watch when really, really, really high. It was a life mistake.

Oh dear, I can see why. Whatever made you watch it high?

no, it was brilliant, and said what had to be said. it allowed for beauty in life, but elegically mourned its transience. xpost

it was also more honest and less glamourising about violence than almost every other violent movie i have ever seen

It didn't allow for beauty in life, it was a shit ending with some reverse deus ex machina. "Pan to sun, does that make you fucking happy?" Plus every single character was a revolting asshole.

Tuomas, I was already k-high when my buddie/roomie brought it home to watch for a feminist class paper about rape in movies. I knew it had the infamous anal rape scene. The cinematography, the general assholishness and a GUY GETTING HIS HEAD BASHED UIN WITH A FIRE EXTINGUISHER mean bad bad trip.

I don't see why it NEEDED all that fucking violence, "honest" or not. It was just shock value.

I mean I see why they put some of the violence in the movie but the movie was completely unnecessary and stomach-turningly homophobic.

Agreed.

so when the lead male goes around punching gay men and calling them 'faggots', we're meant to sympathise, right? when he's being horribly racist to the cab driver, we're meant to sympathise? this is his own descent into hell we're watching. his own irrational insanity. the horror of the gay club is witnessed by him, through his eyes. he is the rogue element, however. consenting adults going about their business are subjected to a display of violence and murder perpetrated by crazed heterosexuals. of course they don't intervene. they're witnessing the evisceration of pierre's soul. it's awesome. in the traditional meaning of the word.

the end was also the complete opposite of deus ex machina. we pan upwards, but the screen keeps spinning...and we're subjected to a terrifying stroboscopic depiction of an incomprehensible eternity. and then the film's final message. it's devastating, not exalting.

oh wait you said 'reverse deus ex machina', doesn't change that your 'pan to sun' comment is misleading.

Bah no we're not supposed to "sympathize" but it didn't seem didactic in any way. Not that I like didacticism but srsly it was just gay bar hell, guy kicking shit out of people in the worst fucking way. It was just SHOWING it for the sake of SHOWING it, like "look dudes this is terrible," like an artsy rotten.com or snuff film. And there's way better ways to show "the evisceration of someone's soul" than having him smash someone's fucking skull in!

I really hated the ending bcz it was like "see, things started out okay. Fooled ya! Not the entire world is painful violence, rape, and forced subway insult matches. Have you ever looked at the sun man whoa cosmic."

I have no idea in why I am supposed to be interested or see the actions of or even think about such a revolting anti-everyman!

consenting adults going about their business are subjected to a display of violence and murder perpetrated by crazed heterosexuals. of course they don't intervene. they're witnessing the evisceration of pierre's soul.

Er, they're not just not-intervening, they're cheering when he beats that one guy to pulp. Also, even if we don't sympathize with the two protagonists, the way the S/M club is portrayed doesn't make it and the people there sympathetic either. Contrast that with the sweet heterosexual bliss of the beginning, and maybe you can see heaven/hell dichotomy I mentioned upthread.

The heterosexuals are revolting too IMO, FWIW, tho I don't think the director intended that. God he threw everything in he could. "And...she's PREGNANT!"

the ending was both a study of tenderness and premonition. the characters are dimly aware of temporal vicissitude, and pierre especially knows that he is growing old, he is running out of time. that final shot was not 'whoa cosmic', it was 'HOLY FUCK SHIT THE VOID'.

ok my take on the gay club was that hellish as it might have seemed to the camera, the lust and the raw sexuality was also portrayed, almost as if the camera was trying to only see what it wanted to see, reflecting marcus' own newly-revealed bigotries. the heterosexual bliss, tender as it was, held premonition of failure, and in pierre's sexual inadequacy demonstrated a transience and imperfection of its own. in its perfection it was criticising its own complacency, especially in light of what we'd already seen.

Your 25-cent worda are not changing my opinion and what is "the void" but "whoa cosmic"? (I understand this from the beatles)

pregnancy is a fine metaphor for the film. the ending is pregnant with the beginning. from an angel a demon is born.

you meant 'whoa cosmic' in a 'wow the mysteries of the universe' way, i meant 'THE VOID' in a 'SHIT WE'RE ALL DOOMED' way.

You like a shitty, cruel movie.

I feel judged. I don't like it when people are judged on what art they enjoy. Unless that art is, like, Jack Johnson. :D

I said the movie is shitty and cruel, not you. Sorry for the misunderstanding. And what's wrong with Miles Davis' "Tribute to Jack Johnson?" ;)

soundtrack is awes

this

i dunno what i think abt the film now; i saw it once, it scared the shit out of me, i didn't think it was homophobic. i don't think abbott or louis saw what i got from the film (which might've been all in my head), which is that the end of the film isn't idyllic at all, because there are subtle echoes/foreshadowings of the violence within the tender scenes between vince and mon.

Dave Matthews Band, then! I dunno, I couldn't help liking this film. Not sure if this makes me a warped individual, but really I honestly believe it has a strong moral sense, and that it abhors the violence perpetrated within it. It does so because it is presented to us without abstraction, without deviousness. Thus do we see violence in its purest form, thus do we abhor it, and thus does the film abhor it. There is cruelty and shittiness IN the movie, but the movie itself is an enormously successful portrayal of it. It does not lie to us. A movie of just the couple would lie to us; it would deny us Marcus' prejudices. Every movie denies us knowledge of the characters external to their presented story. What if they were raped? What if they were murdered? Is it necessary to know? Maybe not, but this movie actually asks that (very important) question, and what could have been a romantic comedy-turned-shocker in sequential order is actually a journey into comprehension of beauty and horror within the same sphere. Very few films I've seen manage to do this so successfully. And, yes, with such a superb soundtrack too!

Enrique, I've said pretty much what you've just said throughout my criticism.

oic

er anyway thinking about it, those echoes/foreshadowings are an interesting bit of narrative technique, but i dunno if i go along with their implications!

The only bit of the movie I found at all crass was the bit where Alex speaks of the 'red tunnel'. A little bit too obvious. Unless, come to think of it, she was dreaming of her pregnancy...

Actually, that confusion could be quite interesting. Mixed messages, misleading premonitions. Truth only revealed in the event.

I got nothing much to go on about Noe's forthcoming movie other than that Morbs will hate it (if he even sees it). The poster is some hot shit, tho:

http://www.dreadcentral.com/img/news/may08/enterthevoidbig.jpg

"Making a film is difficult, but making a great film is an almost impossible task."

"This quote from Spielberg is perhaps not completely accurate, but that’s how I remember it. However, some examples of great films do exist, including the film which had such an influence on my existence: 2001, A Space Odyssey. Without professing to be able to create such a masterpiece, trying to make a film that is, at the same time, a large-scale entertainment, suitable for adults and complex in cinematic terms, is one of the most exciting undertakings one could wish to tackle. And if one does not set out with the aim of making a great film, one can be sure that it will not turn out to be one.

Few of the arts can satisfy man’s need to be uplifted as immediately as film. And none (except interactive video games) can yet reproduce the maelstrom of our states of perception and consciousness. In the past, certain films have tried to adopt the subjective point of view of the main character. enter the void will try to improve upon its predecessors and accompany the hero just as much in his normal state of awareness as in his altered states: the state of alertness, the stream of consciousness, memories, dreams...

The visions described in the script are inspired partly by the accounts of people who have had near-death experiences, who describe a tunnel of light, seeing their lives flashing past them and ‘astral’ visions, and partly by similar hallucinatory experiences obtained by consuming DMT, the molecule which the brain sometimes secretes at the moment of death and which, in small doses, enables us to dream at night. The film should sometimes scare the audience, make it cry and, as much as possible, hypnotise it.

In recent years, films with labyrinthine structures have proved the audience’s ability to follow storylines in the form of a puzzle, and its desire to move away from linear narration. But a complex form where the content does not move the spectator in any way would only amount to mathematic virtuosity. Whereas this film is above all a melodrama: the universal melodrama of a young man who, after the brutal death of his parents, promises that he will protect his little sister no matter what and who, sensing that he himself is dying, fights desperately to keep his promise. A film where the life of one person is linked to the love he has for another human being.

The reason for choosing the most modern areas of Tokyo as a setting is to further emphasize the fragility of the brother and sister by propelling them like two small balls in a giant pinball machine made up of black, white and fluorescent colours.

My previous two films, which were far less ambitious, were once described by a critic as being like roller coasters playing with the most reptilian desires and fears of the spectator. enter the void, whose themes and artistic choices will be far more varied and colourful, should, if I succeed, be the Magic Mountain which I, as a spectator, dream of riding on."

Sounds tailor-made for my sensibilities.

so, so psyched

I am actually looking forward to this more than any other movie ever

i really dig the poster linked above, but after irreversible and i stand alone, it would take a LOT to make me "look forward" to anything else he's doing

that poster is hot as fuck

Yes it is. I want one whole wall in my apartment painted to look just like it.

i just watched this for the first time and am currently fascinated with it, although i am not sure whether my eventual reaction will be positive or negative yet.

one big thing that seems to be glossed over upthread - at the moment the opening murder scene occurs, the audience is unaware of whether the victim is or isn't the correct perpetrator, which seems like an absolutely key tension for what i think noe was trying to do. i can elaborate on that further once my brain settles down a bit.