Irréversible

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.

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!

This film won't be for everyone. There are two scenes that require a strong stomach, the camera work, initially at least, is near nausea inducing and the narrative structure, playing chronologically backwards to some may feel gimmicky.

I thought this was terrific though.

The plot is essentially a revenge thriller, where a sexual assault is avenged through a brutal act of violence.

The narrative structure works for me - starting with a brutal act of violence, then gradually plays out the events that led up to that point. It is frenetic, urgent and compelling. Vincent Cassel is brilliant as ever here too.

The trigger for the revenge is shown as a protracted sexual assault, and I'm sure many will consider it gratuitous. To describe it as such is kinda missing the point - its duration and violence makes the viewer complicit in the crime and is, in part intended to justify the act of violence that follows (though we the audience have already seen).

It would be easy to reduce the film to the narrative device and these two scenes. Those scenes do live long in the memory, but the film is more than that. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of watching the film again, but that's because once is enough, doesn't make it any more compelling. I thought this was mint.

Gaspar Noé's Irreversible doesn't seek comfort or catharsis. It disorients, suffocates, and refuses to let up. The relentless rotating shots were meant to trap the viewer in chaos, but for me, they were more exhausting than immersive. Instead of pulling me deeper, they pushed me away, making the experience feel more frustrating than absorbing. It was overwhelming in a way that felt more like a test of patience than a narrative choice.

Nothing is softened or made palatable. Some scenes are so deeply disturbing they feel impossible to endure, but that is the intent. Noé refuses to let the worst of humanity be ignored, dragging reality into the light where it cannot be brushed aside. The reverse chronology settled in naturally after a while. If anything, it made the tragedy hit harder. Watching time strip away the horror, revealing warmth and love underneath, carried a quiet cruelty. Within a single day, life offers both its most beautiful and most devastating moments, and there is no way to change the order in which they arrive.

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.