Enter The Void by Gaspar Noé

Early discussion here Irreversible: C/D but now it seems this film will make its debut at Cannes next week. I reckon it'll be one of the cinematic events of the decade, and to say I'm excited is an understatement.

So what's the deal with the movie? That thread is short on details.

Dude lives in Tokyo with his sister, gets stabbed outside a club, goes on crazy psychedelic out-of-body experience round city, through time and space, partially based on the Tibetan Book Of The Dead

i.e. rad

Sounds kind of like that stupid Hugh Jackman movie by the guy who made PI to me.

lol i so have to see the fountain now

goes on crazy psychedelic out-of-body experience round city, through time and space

Sounds like DMT.

http://www.soudainlevide.com/english/

DMT indeed.

teaser. appropriately frustrating i guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mooCXnTMJUQ&feature=related

supposedly the opening credits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPxgi-PiNFE

japanese trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9B941MaqAs

Wide release of Enter the Void will be in September. Boo.

Meanwhile, here's a Noe short about a woman who starves to death eating only kittens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4g2tNacm2c

loooooooooooooool

A+++ pisstake, much lmao @ youtube comment debate

anyway roll on september, this promises to be quite something. fuck the haters etc

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/enterthevoid/

Story/premise coming off pretty cornball here. Still gonna do what I can to see this in a theater though.

Despite using him for funny imgs, I have actually never seen one of this guy's films. Not too into the french nihilism thing

anyone seen this yet?

deeply terrifying poster

yes

it's too long and pretty dumb but at the same time, kinda rad

the opening credits (as posted above) are the best part iirc!

hrmmm... seeing this while high -- bad idea?

i think it'd be fun for the first little bit, then you'd get bored and impatient as it wore off, which is often the case when seeing a movie while high ime

thanks for the pro tips

dont enter the void w/o them

O_O

fuuuuuuuuuuck

?

saw a near-midnight showing and it was probably the most emotionally draining theater experience i've ever had. i felt beat-up by the end

i mean five stars, A+++ and all, but i don't think i'll ever want to put myself through seeing it again

people were straight peacing out thru the whole thing. Was that at your showing or just because mine was a 2 1/2 hour movie going til 2 am

oic

ya mine was a midnight screening too, don't remember that many walkouts tho

i interviewed him the day after and he was incredibly hungover and stinky and paz de la huerta kept calling him and asking for aspirin

this is def movie of the year for me

in 1986 it was 'children of a lesser god' for me

I saw this with a Q+A on Thursday night. It was absorbing, but nowhere near great or even *impressive*. A floaty sprawl into nowhere and back. Somewhat menacing and atmospheric, but hardly moving or scary like a good Lynch film or something...this is the key to why it was only 7/10 for me.

Max Tundra/ben was at the screening..we had a chat!

yeah i can't say i loved this... it was really something, to be sure, but also just kinda lacking in real oomph beyond the cinematics - which i did enjoy a bunch. also it just goes on for way too fucken long

ha this interview is full of gems

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/blogs/film/2010-09-14/gaspar-noe-enter-the-void/

enjoyed this quite a bit, though i am guilty of taking a smoke break. decent celeb spotting at the screening. A+++ WOULD SEE AGAIN

Love these trailers. Unfortunately, this is showing at an arthouse theater in Chicago without the best sound and picture -- seems like one to see in as state-of-the-art a theater as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCVmy5bCf58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_SgLWefSfY&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbUSHkOEyOs&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKzLGgTbAe0&feature=related

Hmm, On demand, too

Saw it this afternoon, left me a mixture of amazed/awed and frustrated.

The bad: if I'd had an ounce of compassion for the characters (Linda esp. was the very worst kind of whiny idiot) then I think the emotional intensity that Noe was trying for might have worked. But it was just a case of stuff happening to them and, other than the really visceral bits like the crash and the shooting, I was left thinking "so what?". Other than Alex they were all total dicks - doubtless Noe made a decision to write the characters as obnoxious fuck-ups, but the aimed for profundity of their experiences was lost on me because of this.

The good: an astonishing aesthetic and technical tour de force. I'm rarely blown away by the visuals of modern films, but this was something else. The merging of sound design, music and cinematography was incredibly effective too. What I took away from it the most was probably a series of isolated elements eg. the DMT trip, the streets of Tokyo from below and above, and especially the whole Love Hotel sequence. If Noe could have married this stuff with even slightly engaging characters and/or plot then this film could have been *incredible*.

yeah, Alex was a cool dude

man, the car accident scenes have been sticking with me for days. Just the long scenes of young Linda's hysterics and young Oscar's stunned confusion was just the most gut-wrenching part of this movie hands down.

Yeah, I should clarify that the flashback/life-before-yr-eyes stuff with the kids were almost the only bits that felt successful with regard to making me feel a connection with the characters; the late on scene with Oscar and Linda strapped in behind their dead parents was fucking heavy and I just wish more of it could have been so directly powerful.

the rollercoaster->car crash edit was pretty intense

yeh the screaming wee girl was pretty intense. cared nothing for any of the characters proper at all. the bit with dopey oscar walking down the stairs behind alex eh explaining the book of the dead was really funny these foreign people in tokyo was like whit stillman or something I did like it when alex asked oscar for some water and then asked to take the water with them though. the drifting bits were pretty incredible maybe the best bits other than the opening titles which were def the best bit but the drifting bits did just go on too long and so did other stuff really wasn't enjoying it by the end and some of the more graphic bits were a bit yawn and there were a few lols at the back of the cinema. was really impressed by titles and then quite immersed for the first maybe 30 mins or so and then some pretty cool bits through the rest but yeah was fairly wanting it to end after a while one of those films though that a few days after seeing it I think that was really quite amazing and I think of what it looked like and some of the none-lame atmospherics rather than the stupid stuff seems silly to worry about reality or some idea of believability or sense in plot when it's doing the other stuff on balance it was good

the rollercoaster->car crash edit was pretty intense

seriously, i got a warm tingle that went from the front of my head down the back of my neck, like someone cracked a warm egg on me

uhh someone did

He isn't alive at this point, he is a voyueristic eye that is incapable of any kind of interaction with the living world other than watching it. But I suppose a film like this can be interprated in many ways because of its hallucinatory style. Surely you cant fuck your sister when your dead?

The point I was trying to make rather badly was that I didn't think it was a depiction of overt incest. Yes some unsavoury stuff but no sex between them. It is alluded to but is just background stuff really.

For me if this film was character driven it would be a fail. Linda is just a standard tragic hooker character. It still doesn't detract from the film that you dont buy their interaction and are not convinced that they are siblings. For me this is a film about what goes on when you are out of your mind. The plot and dialogue are just the obligatory components of a wafer thin story in this case. That is what excited me about this film, it has been made with little regard for rational movie structure. In my opinion it is a genuine attempt at creating something that is a new way of depicting how life is sometimes experienced.

love the shit book of the dead dialogue sequence down the stairs to the club

yes, we do not see them committing the act of incest, but the film makes it clear that they have a rather sexually charged brother/sister relationship. describing it as "incestual" isn't off the mark. anyway, silly details. xpost.

I guess my real gripe was the manipulation Noé takes at every given turn - DEAD PARENTS! INCEST! CAR CRASH! - where the premise alone was really cool and unique. I wanted this transcendent experience, but the exploitative trickery just kind of ruined it for me. That said, it was visually stunning and I won't forget it any time soon.

really wish Noe would get someone to write him something cool. there's a lot of talent there, it's just weighed down by so much dumb.

by the time he was smash cutting from the naked mother in the bathtub to fucking the friend's mom i just wanted it to be over. i mean hoo boy.

If nothing else I've got to hand it to a film where the camera emerging from the womb is the most predictable ending

I thought this movie peaked at the Love Hotel sequence toward the end.

Just finished watching a #$%^ torrent of it on my %$*@ Acer but DAMN. Loved it.

If nothing else I've got to hand it to a film where the camera emerging from the womb is the most predictable ending

― Bangelo, Saturday, February 5, 2011 9:59 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark

lol

finally got around to watching this on netflix. really liked it. didn't drag for me at all.

funny how this and The Tree of Life are essentially bizarro anti-versions of each other.

I wanted this transcendent experience, but the exploitative trickery just kind of ruined it for me.

this movie isn't reaching for transcendence. it's really thumbing its nose at the idea of transcendence. it's about regression, if anything.

it's a big flashy dumb trip through a dying idiot's psyche.

One good thing about watching this at home is that at least you only have the back of one guy's head getting in the way the whole time.

Haha

this film is basically tree of life w more dmt and less dinosaurs

I've watched the opening credits like ten times but never made it more than 5 minutes into the movie itself.

Early discussion here Irreversible: C/D but now it seems this film will make its debut at Cannes next week. I reckon it'll be one of the cinematic events of the decade, and to say I'm excited is an understatement.

― sorry for british (country matters), Friday, May 8, 2009 11:15 PM (2 years ago)

lj was right

you do realise I still haven't seen it, nor do I particularly want to

no film's worth has travelled with such exquisite inversity to my advancing months as Irreversible's

hey elge

yah i remember u recanting on noé

ive not seen irreversible, i saw seul contre tous years ago and dont remember a lot about it other than it being a fairly impressive first feature with neat godardian intertitles and the glowering visage of the poujadist psycho protag

enter the void tho, is something else

the discourse around his films is dreadful, he alienates the right ppl but typecasts himself as a korine level idiot-visionary in the process

how do you make the credits -- is it in after effects?

couldn't get on board w enter the void. extremely impressive and well-crafted, a hell of a drug, but whether you take it as an embrace or a repudiation of mystical transcendentalism, it struck me as drivel. perhaps that just makes me "the right people"...

no, i would prefer that u liked it

dang

all of those boorish anglo empiricist EMPERORS NEW CLOTHES, PRETENTIOUS BLOODY OLD RUBBISH critics who insist on getting upset by trier haneke dumont etc are just the worst most tiresome idiots tho

i think there is some value to this film and i really liked parts but i was glad to watch it at home on netflix because i really liked being able to FF through some really drawn-out parts (for example, the interminable crane shots over the model of tokyo)

it felt like an undeserved and overlong directors cut of a better movie

i really liked being able to FF through some really drawn-out parts (for example, the interminable crane shots over the model of tokyo)

i could watch these shots for hours

yeah, tbh the crane shots were one of my favorite things about the film. photography and design were great pretty much all the way through. was the story & characters i got tired of.

really? they were too fake-looking for me, though i really did enjoy the ones at the end where the city was all lit up and "psychedelicized".

i think my favorite parts where the rave/nightclub scene, especially "coming up" part and the part where they're coming down in that glittery underground room full of twinkly crystal stuff and mirrors. that and the abrupt cut from the rollercoaster ride to the *big traumatic event* (trying not to spoil this one though i think it already happened upthread)

my favorite part is how he floats in to his sister's vagina

dude you could not pay me to float into paz de la huerta's greasy vagina

jesus fucking christ

sorry, took me aback [/loi]. i mean, uh, i agree that the flying/floating "crane shot" parts were fakey looking, but in a way that didn't bother me, especially when they started to get all psychedelically glowy in the second half.

paz de la huerta's greasy vagina

^ dn's up for grabs

^ thread ideas

the crane shots of tokyo / the 'wow...tokyo on acid' scale model thereof were great

really it isn't a film whose rarified qualities are best appreciated by describing scenes diagramatically any more than attempting to convey the greatness of 'mirror' might be helped by describing the scenes where tarkovsky's mother runs around a deserted dreamscape and washes her hair in a room full of falling plasterwork and then there's a shot of some grass blowing in the wind etc etc

even when you try to recollect it, one wonders how it is that loads of seamless crane shots in and through buildings didn't look like a trailer for the sims as filmed by jodorowsky, but really it doesn't seem at all like that whilst watching

the soundtrack is notweworthy too...lfo, karkowski, lucier....

i guess i just wasn't as absorbed by those long shots as i was by tarkovsky's long shots ... another example would be at the beginning when he was watching his DMT hallucination against the ceiling, very slow

i guess i don't really care for diegetic time in movies, esp when imo he's already covered that base via the POV, but yeah, maybe i just have a short attention span because though i enjoy stalker and solaris enough to own copies i still find myself checking my watch a lot during those

i'm a johnny-come-lately, but i've just seen this and irreversible ... and for once, Morbz's bitchy dismissiveness is totally 100% OTM. i can get w/ stylized, disturbing ultraviolence (i.e., i like Takashi Miike films). Gaspar Noe, however, is just pretentious & repulsive nonsense.

also, i wonder if any epileptics have sued Noe (or the theaters that showed this) yet -- they might have a case!

dunno if there's a thread for this but I would definitely nominate this for "film that's way more fun to talk about than it is to actually watch"

i love the harsh ambient qualities of noe's stuff, esp the last ten minutes of irreversible and at least the first half of void - he really nails that white light floaty rush of gd mdma like no other filmmaker imho - and i absolutely can't think of anything that's pretentious abt his movies - some of the verry long take shots passing over tokyo streets at the start of void are a considered and sincere technical exercise in spatial/temporary fuckery - it's also quite a hopeful film, too (we have been here before and we will be here again)

noe and dumont ftw!

co-sign 100% of that post

"gd MDMA"

feel the LOVE, morbs

not to pick on you, ward, but this:

it's also quite a hopeful film, too (we have been here before and we will be here again)

contradicts this:

i absolutely can't think of anything that's pretentious abt his movies

at least in my mind.

to wit: bullshit metaphysical posturing (which Noe himself doesn't even subscribe to, in his own words) and puerile camera tricks (i.e., the PussyCam, complete w/ thrusting cock, sperm and ova).

it's better than irreversible, i'll give it that much. and Noe has good taste in the (better) directors from whom he steals (e.g., Lynch, Kubrick, Tarantino, Kalatozov).

x-post

i dunno, it's not an original idea - it's kind of a buddhist sentiment, isn't it? - but pretentious how? i mean, noe makes it p clear in irreversible that TIME - real time - drug time - eternal time - is a v big interest of his - and imho it's a good subject to investigate in a durational medium like film (and i don't think you have to be a believer - apart from IN CINEMA lol - in any sense to also be interested in this subject)

Every Noé film has some amazing technical tricks, and foregrounds them in the service of misanthropy, sophomoric chin stroking and flat characters. Still there aren't many directors doing art cinema carnival rides, and that's enough reason for me to like his films.

I've heard a lot of talk about this film and I'm starting to think I might have found this film sadder than anyone else who'd seen it. Nodody told me it was sad but I think I might get weepy if I see it again; I was a little bit upset in bed after seeing this. The music at the last sex scene is gorgeous, need to find out who did that.

It was too long but it didn't drag nearly as bad as I was told.

I couldn't find many cheap and decent DVD versions of this and I'm not sure if the copy I got was poor or if my DVD player wasn't good enough for it, because the picture wasn't great, so I feel like I haven't experienced the film properly yet. Reluctant to get a bluray machine (are there multi-region players yet?)

pretty posi you can easily score or make Blu-Ray players region free these days? Though I don't know for sure. I'm sure Oppo makes some.

Michael Gira posted about this on the Swans Facebook page just the other day:

this is a great film, and apparently a disaster for all concerned (except the lucky ones who have seen it). i met gaspar noe in paris recently. we hung out and drank a bit. i started talking about God, and i think i either scared him or repelled him or disgusted him. anyway, it was nice to meet such a true genius....

Better than those lousy fake geniuses eh Mike

We watched this last night because my 17-yr-old son is kind of a Noe fan. He'd watched Climax and Irreversible, I'd only seen Climax, which I mostly enjoyed for its energy but also found a bit tedious. "A bit tedious" is a big understatement for Enter the Void, which imo is much too long and mostly focused on all the wrong things.

It was not nearly as freaky or psychedelic as I was expecting. The idea of rendering the experience of death and reincarnation in a movie is nervy enough, and I was ready for Noe to really run with it. But it stays disappointingly earthbound, wrapped up in a boring narrative about dumb unlikable people. The only parts I really liked were the ones with FX and CGI and crazy swooping filmmaking, but those were interspersed with long scenes about uninteresting characters. Bleah.