Hey folks, Harry here... Below is the confession of "Not A Pussy", a film-goer that just could not physically or mentally handle the first 20 minutes of IRREVERSIBLE. The number 9 film on my best of 2002 list. Like I said in my Best of 2002 article, IRREVERSIBLE is not for the timid or the easily disturbed. This film is brutal. Unlike Guy Ritchie showing you Vinnie Jones' Big Chris slamming that door on that head repeatedly. This film focuses on the head in the door. This film isn't pretty and isn't nice. It is an unflinchingly long stare into the abyss of inhumanity and it does affect those that willingly stare into it. Go at your own risk...
SUNDANCE: I didn't quite survive IRREVERSIBLE
I survived the first twenty minutes of Gasper Noe's IRREVERSIBLE, but just barely. Harry, I don't know whether to admire you for enduring the entire film or to pity you for witnessing what other vicious imagery must have followed that sickeningly brutal killing in the first twenty minutes.
First of all, let me establish the fact that I ain't no pussy. I'm as desensitized a twenty-one-year-old as they come. I thought I had seen everything; films about the Snuff industry (8MM), heroine-addicts (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM), and serial killers with illusions of granduer (SE7EN, good old A.K. Walker). But these were American films, Hollywood films for the most part, and they draw a line in the sand even with their grotesque subject matters.
Secondly, I've never walked out of a film. Never. I've endured some of the most painfully awful excuses for cinema Hollywood has let escape. I had enough respect for the people who worked long and hard to create such a piece of candy-coated crud to watch all 134 minutes of WINDTALKERS. I would scoff at all the narrow-minded fools who walked out of MOULIN ROUGE after the first half hour. Surely they should be willing to give the film a chance.
I gave IRREVERSIBLE a chance. This was to be my very first Sundance film. I'm a Utah local and this is the first time I've attended the festival. I hold foreign films at a very high regard. Foreign filmmakers often have the chutzpah to show us something Hollywood would turn their noses up at. Foreign film can be brave, adventerous, wickedly funny, and very thought-provoking. I just watched a film from Bolivia called "Courage of the People" about the exploitation of tin miners in South America by their murderous government who doesn't think twice about slaughtering anyone who rises up against them. It was not a timid film. It was refreshingly unsubtle.
IRREVERSIBLE is the polar oppostite of subtle. It disturbed me to the deepest pit of my soul. Here is how the Sundance catalog describes it: "Noe uses remarkable aural and visual techniques to rush through the figurative mind and body of a man consumbed by revenge...Combining these images with a complex sound design intended to disturb the audience to its core produces an astoundingly organic cinematic sensation...Noe ingeniously constructs the film in reverse order..." etc. Doesn't this sound like a neat movie? "Ooo, it's told in reverse order, kind of like MEMENTO, and I liked MEMENTO!" That's what I was thinking. Critics said THE RING was disturbing, so I wasn't expecting much worse.
Like you said, Harry, the camera work in this film is somewhat akin to being a fly on the wall. A fly attracted the shit. Shit is happening in the film. Lots of it. And that's just in the first twenty minutes. I had no problem with the camera work. If you're one of those delicate folk who got motion sickness from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, beware of this movie, 'cause you ain't seen NOTHIN' yet.
The film begins with two older men (one of them buck-necked), speaking ominously about time and how it "destroys all things." The buck-necked guy then tells a story of how he had sex with his own daughter, with disasterous results. "She was so cute," he says.
We hear police sirens in the street below. The camera somersaults out the window (literally) and swoops down to Club Rectum, where something terrible has happened. A beating. A murder. Something. The victims being hauled out on gurneys are forced to endure an endless tirade of deflamatory homosexual remarks. I mean ENDLESS.
Rewind twenty minutes or so. We follow Marcus and Pierre as they hunt for someone by the name of "Tesia" in the red lit dungeons of Club Rectum. Patrons are doing the good, ol' "inny-and-outy" left and right. Marcus is, as the Sundance catalog say, "consumed with revenge." He wants to talk with the Tesia fellow and he wants to talk to him now. No one wants to help him. The camera flips and rotates, never getting a good look at the action; we're as confused and disoriented as the protaganist. Not until Marcus finds Tesia, or someone who may know Tesia, do we get a good look.
It's at this point that I was shooken to my very bones. I would usually warn people of spoilers here, but I think you (the readers) should be aware of this scene when deciding whether or not this film is really for you.
Marcus is brutally killed by Tesia. I totally agree with you, Harry, when you said this is one of the most brutal scenes ever captured on film. Marcus' head is literally pounded into pulp with what looked like a fire extinguisher. The sounds of metal on bone was sickening. I don't know how the filmmakers pulled this scene off, but it looks so REAL.
I felt violated.
This film had stepped over the line for me.
It was at this point, after the killing, that I left the theater, along with several others. Gasper Noe is trying to make a point with this film, I understand that he's trying to show us the horrible, irreversiable human acts, and by constructing it in reverse order, we (supposedly, I didn't stay for the rest) see the innocence of these lives before they are damaged beyond repair.
My only question is "Why?" We know the world is round, we don't need anyone to prove this. We know rape and murder are horrible, irreversible acts. We know innocent lives are ruined by these acts. This film made me sick. It is unnecessary. It's making a point we see pounded home every night on the ten o'clock news.
I walked out of this film and I hope I never have to walk out of a film again. I drove to the multiplex and watched GANGS OF NEW YORK to wash this film from my mind. Yes, folks, GANGS OF NEW YORK is squeeky clean entertainment compared to IRREVERSIBLE.
I'm seeing THE SINGING DETECTIVE on Sunday night. Hopefully it will be a much better experience. I'm an open minded individual, but IRREVERSIBLE was just way too much. I'm sure I've got a lot of you (the readers) insanely interested in seeing this film now. Go at your own risk. I'm dead serious.
Not A Pussy out...
