Irreversibel

I'm a sucker for film-world hype--always have been, and probably always will be. When I stumble across a film that is so controversial it inspires both gasps of horror and cheers of praise, I flock to it. There is something intriguing about film's capacity to house unpleasantness, and just how far a director will go in conveying his message (it's always interesting to see whether or not they have a justified reason for the excess). "Irreversible," the backward-structured film from French shock auteur Gaspar Noe ("I Stand Alone") spins you out of control with as much regularity as his camera and characters will allow. It's a curious piece of work designed to provoke the audience--at the beginning, you're disoriented and confused (and, if you're like me, getting carsick from the deliberately erratic camera movements), and even repulsed by the actions of the unfamiliar characters hassling the patrons of a seedy homosexual club, a sequence that ends with a ghastly murder. Okay, then, so what? Clearly the rest of the movie is going to give us an explanation...but would the film have had a similar effect if it were told in a straightforward manner? Is the backward motion of "Irreversible" just a gimmick used by Noe (who is not immune from snobbery and pretension) to draw attention to his film? It's hard to say. Personally, I reject the notion of the reverse storyline being used as a gimmick, simply because of how deliberately the previous pieces fit (certain passages of dialog, particularly a discussion of orgasms that serves as a prelude to one of the most horrifying rape scenes in film history); Noe certainly wasn't asleep in his construction of the film. "Irreversible" displays the type of oppressive misanthropy (the dialog is loaded with racial and homophobic slurs) evidenced in Noe's "I Stand Alone" (the tale of an out-of-work butcher driven to madness by everyone around him), but then pulls back from the hard-edged violence to show a tender humanity that might be even more startling, since the film could have easily played itself for nothing but shock value the entire time. "Irreversible" is an unsettling conundrum that guides us through the highs and lows of the human condition--it pushes buttons of morality, shows in graphic detail what others would only suggest, and brings us out the end of the tunnel exhausted, invigorated, and breathless. A stunning film, somewhat hampered by its excessive dialog.

I have seen this film only once. It needs multiple viewings, I feel, to fully appreciate it's merit. This is something that will come in time but I felt it was only right to comment after my first impression. I instantly gave the film 10 out of 10, not because I overly enjoyed it (nigh on impossible) but because it shook me, at times, to my very core and affected me in a way that I cannot easily or fully describe. I can honestly say Irreversible is the most devastating piece of cinema I've ever witnessed. This isn't solely due to it's shocking content but more so the production as a whole and how it has been constructed and packaged. It truly is a work of art. Camera-work, lighting, colour (primarily gaudy, striking tones of red and orange) all combine in an unforgettable amalgam of brilliance. Featuring towering performances from Cassel, Belluci and Dupontel the film lurches backward in time depicting the events of a truly tragic night in the lives of three friends. Alex (Belluci) is brutally raped on her way home from a party and Marcus (Cassel) and Pierre (Dupontel) set off determined to wreak vengeance on the perpetrator. However, that is merely the plot. Admittedly quite a simple premise but the way it is played out is unforgettable. This is a film that everyone should and arguably needs to see as it is, for me, a milestone of modern cinema. Raw and unflinching, can you stomach it?

I just watched Irreversible....very difficult to watch. On the surface, the movie is very exploitive. It simultaneously arouses the two worst feelings possible: anger and helplessness. Below the surface, the movie may be more depressing than the rape of Monica Bellucci and the mistaken vengeance that it inspires. I think there's a deeper philosophical idea underlying this movie and it's not a happy one. At one point we see a poster of 2001: A Space Odyssey as the movie keeps segueing into the past. How is Irreversible related to 2001? Recall how Kubrick showed a very brief glimpse into the prehistory of humans at the beginning of 2001, before leaping far into the future Space Age? And in both time periods, Kubrick's work is imbued with a chronic pessimism about humanity. During the prehistoric era, our capacity to evolve and survive depended on the ability to create crude tools which we promptly used to exterminate rival gangs of pre-humans. In the Space Age our ability to break the bonds of Earth and explore Space depends on our ability to create more sophisticated tools: building and programming supercomputers, like HAL. But eventually that also winds up biting us in the ass. Noe, does the opposite, sort of. He shows segments of three individuals' lives but he starts in the Present and keeps going back further to the past. Noe seems intent on showing how what happens to humans is not just dependent on the past but, in fact, strictly determined by the past. At the end of the movie he has apparently gone all the way back to the Big Bang (Really intense flashing white light and sonic rumbling from the audio track). What is Noe getting at? Is it something more deeply pessimistic than even Kubrick dared imagine? What does Noe mean by the title "Irreversible" ?

Is it that conditions for the subsequent evolution of our universe were fixed by the initial conditions of the Big Bang and nothing can change what happens later; and the really radical idea that this strict determinism applies to human actions just as much as it does to, for example, star formation in some far-flung corner of the universe??? That humans do not in fact possess Free Will but are just part of the universe undergoing changes by responding to forces and psychological pressures which all follow precisely from what has happened in the past?? If this is what Noe is conveying, it is very very DARK in a way that goes beyond Kubrick: we're not just violent and hedonistic, we really don't have any choice in the matter. For Noe, being "One With The Universe" isn't a pop slogan from the 60's accompanied by warm feelings of emotional wellbeing; it's a stark physical fact involving a collapse to nihilism. As Time destroys everything, maybe there are no good or bad deeds, just simply "deeds", or as a physicist would call them, "events". Noe = Nietzsche ??: Psychologically, intelligent beings can't evolve in any other direction: the struggle for existence forces us to conceive of ourselves as Free. One of necessary preconditions in the struggle for survival may be intellectual Error. Our perception of ourselves as free sentient inner-directed Agents: just a little joke played on us by the universe as it bends us over and we take it in the Rectum.

"Irreversible": the universe as one big Process that, once set in motion, will evolve according to it's own laws and cannot be changed even by human awareness of this Process since our awareness is just one aspect that's been set in motion. Anyway, I hope this isn't what Noe intended because it's very depressing. And even if Noe didn't intend this, maybe it's true nonetheless. Scary thought.

Holy Macaroni! Believe the hype, folks...this really IS one of the most shocking, confronting and raw movies ever made! It actually is one of those rare purchases that makes you wonder what the role of cinema is in modern society. Irréversible certainly can't be classified as 'entertainment', that's for sure. It merely looks like a brutal eye-opener, highly unpleasant to watch at times and it sometimes makes you even feel ashamed to be human! Some of the stuff here goes beyond your most feared nightmares and could easily provoke depression, anti-social behavior and anxiety among influential viewers. It's real-life drama and that makes it so powerful and shocking. Irréversible is told backwards, 'Memento'-style if you wish...only it's a lot more effective here as it was in Memento, which actually was a pretty boring and extremely overrated movie. This very simple backwards-structure aspect gives Irréversible the opportunity to implement a couple of unique and rarely seen style elements. The first half hour (which actually is the end of the story) smacks you in the face right away sets the tone for a non-stop, raw experience. Also, you don't really get to know the characters until the last chapter (which is actually the beginning of the film) The characters are a riddle to you constantly and you can't symphatise with any of them, since you just know too little. Through wild camera movements and simplistic techno-music, a claustrophobic and horrifying atmosphere gets created and the violence is really hard to digest. The infamous scene in which Monica Belluci brutally gets raped is one of the most perverted things I've ever seen. It seems to go on forever and you can really visiualise the painful hell the poor girl is going through. I'd call Irréversible a successful combination of ancient, rough exploitation and modern art-house film-making. The brutality portrayed here is typical for the euro-shock cinema but the stylish shooting lifts it up to Cannes Festival material. Cult as pure as it comes!

For me, the importance of this film, is that it shows the sickening reality of violence. So many movies, especially American ones, have people being killed left and right, but the violence is very unrealistic, with little consequence to the characters. The violence here is gritty, brutal and sickening just like my experience of real, close-up and personal violence. There is no concern for the feelings or well-being of others just a savage, out of control bloodlust and desire for destruction. The seedy sexual situations, make the brutality all the more repulsive.