Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé, 2009)

[mfunk9786]

As part of a sensory mosaic of emotion and memory, I didn't feel as if any flashback was overused.

[domino harvey]

How did Requiem glorify drugs, or did you not watch until the final season? It's really closer to a PSA, an exceptionally well filmed PSA, but a PSA nonetheless.

I have not seen the entire film, but I felt insulted by the showy editing - like I was being manipulated.

I really hate Romeo and Juliet. I mean, I haven't finished the play or anything, but I just tire so much of these "Lovers who were meant to be" stories and I don't need to read the whole thing to know they end up together against all odds

[tenia]

LQ is really spot on, however, I didn't see many changes that needed to take place - but yes, the

Spoiler

parent's car crash

flashback is over used at least by one time too many.

It's not at all the only thing over used, I think.
I was a lot more bothered by the multiple and over long tracking shots over the building, or all the yellow vortexes again and again.
The problem is that, at some point, it felt like the repetition doesn't have any meaning no more, like it's just there to fill the movie to 2h30 because it has to be long or something (cause you know, it's a trip).
Compared to the 10 shots over the buildings, the parent's car crash (used 3 times I think), it wasn't the worse part for me.

As part of a sensory mosaic of emotion and memory, I didn't feel as if any flashback was overused.

As part of a movie that kept me out of the trip because of all these stylish repetitions, any repetition started to be overused after 2 times.
But still, I think you're right : of course, as a whole mosaic, anything could be justified.
But, it's the movie. If you keep the viewer out of the trip, then, what's the purpose ?

[bearcuborg]

How did Requiem glorify drugs, or did you not watch until the final season? It's really closer to a PSA, an exceptionally well filmed PSA, but a PSA nonetheless.

I have not seen the entire film, but I felt insulted by the showy editing - like I was being manipulated.

I really hate Romeo and Juliet. I mean, I haven't finished the play or anything, but I just tire so much of these "Lovers who were meant to be" stories and I don't need to read the whole thing to know they end up together against all odds

I'm sorry, I didn't realize Arronofsky was the new Bill Shakespeare. Also, thanks for spoiling Romeo and Juliet for me.

[knives]

I know what will be really funny, combating witty sarcasm with feigned stupidity to bring about a point that has no relevance to the witty sarcasm.

[bearcuborg]

Ah, I see I stepped on toes in this boys club. I guess you guys hold Requiem and Arronofsky close to your hearts. I saw the first half of Requiem as a glorification of drugs visually, and I don't like being manipulated that way having spent several years working with drug addicts. And yes, I know how it ends up. What movie about drug addiction doesn't end up with that message?

If you see a movie you don't like, one is inclined to stop watching it - his/her Shakespeare reference doesn't hold up though. It's impossible for me to place Arronofsky into a group with Lukas Moodyson, Carlos Reygadas, and Lars Von Trier - even Fincher. Noe explores the dark side of human nature much more bravely.

[domino harvey]

I think Requiem For a Dream is a piece of shit. But, I've actually seen the movie

[bearcuborg]

Ah, good. I just remembered your love for Newsradio and Bogdanovich and couldn't imagine you liking that film. Your point is taken - I didn't quite mean to come for the Tom Townsend (Metropolitan) school thinking, that one doesn't need to read a book to have a opinion on it though. A more precise articulation of my thoughts on Requiem was that it was a film that was overly simplified in it's approach.

I recall you were a big fan of Antichrist, and I would like to know what you think of Enter the Void when you see it, because I saw several parallels.

[tenia]

I recall you were a big fan of Antichrist, and I would like to know what you think of Enter the Void when you see it, because I saw several parallels.

You either said too much or too few, but I'm really interested by the parallels you saw between Enter the void and Antichrist.

[mfunk9786]

I wish I'd never brought Requiem For a Dream up, as this film shouldn't be grouped in with that polarizing just-okay film. I merely meant that this was a much more realistic and moving portrayal of similar subject matter.

[Tom Hagen]

For all its supposed noterity, I barely even remember Requiem aside from, "holy shit, that's Ellen Burstyn!" and Jennifer Connelly's, er, party scene. I suppose that may be the biggest indictment of all.

[Numero Trois]

I have not seen the entire film, but I felt insulted by the showy editing - like I was being manipulated. Time has shown Arronofsky to be a poor filmmaker, so I don't really care to see it again. If I want to see a anti hard drugs film, I'd watch The Corner.

Your evaluation of Aronofsky is fine except for the part where you say he was glorifying drugs. Saying you didn't watch the whole thing pretty much works against your argument. But yes, with all the spastic video game rhythms it is quite manipulative.

Ah, I see I stepped on toes in this boys club. I guess you guys hold Requiem and Arronofsky close to your hearts. I saw the first half of Requiem as a glorification of drugs visually, and I don't like being manipulated that way having spent several years working with drug addicts. And yes, I know how it ends up. What movie about drug addiction doesn't end up with that message?

The movie is so dismal in both plot and execution that it's hard to see where you're coming from. Nothing about the film glorifies drugs. From the get-go the viewer is bludgeoned mercilessly. In that sense, Requiem for a Dream and the films of Noe are alike. Except the former wants you to care about its simple message; the latter doesn't give a shit what you think.

If you see a movie you don't like, one is inclined to stop watching it - his/her Shakespeare reference doesn't hold up though. It's impossible for me to place Arronofsky into a group with Lukas Moodyson, Carlos Reygadas, and Lars Von Trier - even Fincher. Noe explores the dark side of human nature much more bravely.

Arronosky and Reygadas do have at least a little bit in common. They both have shown a preference for featuring the more extreme side with a tendency to rub it in the audience's faces. And both get better results when they exhibit restraint. Haven't seen any Moodyson, but von Trier and Fincher definetly don't deserve to be tossed with the others names discussed.

[Numero Trois]

A more precise articulation of my thoughts on Requiem was that it was a film that was overly simplified in it's approach.

That's putting it mildly.

[zedz]

An amazing film, but a hell of a trite one. And I mean heavy-duty, first-draft-of-a-student-film trite, complete with one-dimensional characters, completely predictable provocations and lumpen expository dialogue. It’s like a fifteen-year-old home-schooled emo kid decided to make a movie about the Meaning of Life, Man, and you’re trapped inside his feeble conception of Everything That Matters for two and a half hours: Sex! Drugs! Pole Dancing! The Tibetan Book of the Dead! The Fucking Pigs, Man! Fucking Parents too – Fuck Them! Some Big Taboo, Something Really Really Deep and Edgy – um, um – Incest! That’ll do! Oh shit, nearly forgot Playstation!

And yet, the visuals are as amazing as everybody says, and the formal ideas are certainly strong enough to demand that this be seen on the big screen, but it’s very hard for me to divorce the form from the content because the deficiencies of the latter directly compromise what the former’s supposed to be all about. The nature of Noe’s experiment is to try and represent in cinematic terms a first-person perspective, and he goes further into that idea than anybody ever has before (in a completely literal sense). Thus we even have every eye blink manifested on screen. The gimmick is extended by taking the person in question places that nobody else has gone – into death and beyond. So, in a way, it’s the cinematic equivalent of Molly Bloom’s monologue, an attempt to represent direct experience in an unprecedented way, but that (unfair) comparison points out the fundamental problem of the film – why would we care about the subjectivity of a character who is so blatantly no more than a standard cliché, or want to experience a world (in however a novel fashion) that consists exclusively of third-hand, stock situations and characters? Shed the fancy visuals, and it’s like a really long, really bad short film, of exactly the sort I’ve seen far too many times, with every idea spelt out in triplicate and every emotion, however banal, amped up to eleven. So, even though you zoom through buildings to get from scene to scene, and view those scenes floating overhead, the scenes themselves are tired, obvious and badly written. Or else you navigate through a long plodding flashback in which every symbol and theme is italicised, through an extremely long chain of match-cuts. The novelty of the technique in both cases doesn’t make the content of those scenes any fresher or more interesting, it doesn’t impart any depth or meaning. It’s interesting as a stylistic take on ‘how we experience stuff’, but neither the experience nor the stuff is particularly worth the effort, in my opinion.

Fortunately, the fancy visuals really are fancy and if you can somehow shut out the dumbness of the story and ideas they’re serving, by all means lie back and enjoy the trip. You’re not going to see another film like this any time soon.

I saw this soon after Amer, another exercise in style that has very similar issues with its drab, silly content, and which I’ll also recommend as a one-of-a-kind big screen experiment / experience. Think the ultra-baroque tendencies of Argento and De Palma thrown into overdrive and applied relentlessly to every single shot of the movie, even if nothing of note is happening. If Amer isn’t the most stylistically over the top film ever made (and I’ll stand by that assessment even after seeing Enter the Void), it’s not for lack of trying.

Ditto what david and Gringo said - Irreversible is a reprehensible piece of shit and if Enter The Void has more of the indefensible homophobia in it I'd appreciate if anyone who has seen Void can confirm, because if it does, Noe won't see a dime from me.

I regret to inform Mr Finch that Noe’s homophobia is indeed present and (in)correct - and completely gratuitous. The guy seems to be terrified that the big boys are after him. Or is that just wishful thinking?

[DDillaman]

zedz, pretty sure we've been going to the same film festival. See you at UNCLE BOONMEE?

The AMER comparison is interesting, in that I saw both with a group, and those that loved AMER (like myself) were less into ENTER THE VOID than those that generally hated it. The rebuttal that I heard was that "ENTER THE VOID had characters and story" - but, if you don't care about them, so what? Absolutely no one would be remotely interested in ENTER THE VOID's story if it weren't for how it was shot.

AMER, by contrast, was so relentlessly subjective and intense that the narrative incoherency didn't matter to me so much - it was more of a felt film than a thought film, and on that level it succeeded admirably.

Then again, if ENTER THE VOID was 90 minutes and AMER was 160, I might have different feelings. I've heard a couple people contend that VOID is supposed to be an exercise in audience punishment to wear you down - well, mission accomplished, I guess. For me, a 100 minute VOID might be a film that I would champion, and there's no question that any 5 minutes of this film, seen in stand-alone, felt like masterwork. It's just, all piled together, wearying, and without any emotional connection to the story, ultimately tedious.

[zedz]

zedz, pretty sure we've been going to the same film festival. See you at UNCLE BOONMEE?

Yep and Yep. And Yep to the rest as well, basically.

The AMER comparison is interesting, in that I saw both with a group, and those that loved AMER (like myself) were less into ENTER THE VOID than those that generally hated it. The rebuttal that I heard was that "ENTER THE VOID had characters and story" - but, if you don't care about them, so what? Absolutely no one would be remotely interested in ENTER THE VOID's story if it weren't for how it was shot.

AMER, by contrast, was so relentlessly subjective and intense that the narrative incoherency didn't matter to me so much - it was more of a felt film than a thought film, and on that level it succeeded admirably.

In Amer's favour is that the content of the film is basically just riffs on genre. It's not aspiring to anything more transcendent or complex, so the play of the surface can happily exist at that surface level.

That said, I felt the first half hour (this was a film that really did feel like three or four short films strung together) was by far the most successful, since that Suspiria-esque fairy tale horror was the particular riff best suited to the hysterical treatment. The second, adolescent sequence I found ridiculous and hilarious, mainly because the disconnect between the film's outlandish style and the inconsequentiality of the action was so profound (a jeans commercial on steroids, uppers and pot). I was getting a little worn down by the final sequence, and plot-wise the denouement was really lame, and because it was the denouement that shabbiness was more annoying to me. I was also a little annoyed because the visual element - all those fragmentary shots (about 70% of the film was in extreme close-up) - was no longer entirely gratuitous / superfluous, but was part and parcel of 'selling' a denouement that was already quite predictable. (I hope that's all vague enough not to constitute a spoiler, even though I doubt anybody will watch this film for the plot!)

One thing I appreciated about Amer is that, in a world where so many mediocre filmmakers over-aestheticise their films, or key moments in their films, here were a couple of filmmakers determined to push that annoying trait to the extreme, to see whether or not they could, by this means alone, rupture the form of the narrative film and create something truly avant garde. I'm not sure they entirely succeeded, but I'm glad they tried.

[mfunk9786]

Maybe I'm a terrible gay-hating bastard and just don't know it, but I didn't catch onto any homophobia in this film...? I haven't yet seen Irreversible so I can't comment on that, but what are you guys referring to in regards to Enter the Void?

[tenia]

Maybe I'm a terrible gay-hating bastard and just don't know it, but I didn't catch onto any homophobia in this film...? I haven't yet seen Irreversible so I can't comment on that, but what are you guys referring to in regards to Enter the Void?

I didn't either, but I didn't see any in Irréversible too.
And I don't see your point about trying to see some in these two movies.

[mfunk9786]

People have been talking about it in this thread.

[Ruh-roh]

Maybe I'm a terrible gay-hating bastard and just don't know it, but I didn't catch onto any homophobia in this film...? I haven't yet seen Irreversible so I can't comment on that, but what are you guys referring to in regards to Enter the Void?

Hey mfunk, seems like I was at the same Danger After Dark screening in Philly as you and somebody else on here.

I think the people who see homophobia in Enter the Void are responding to the Bruno character. Bruno is the only gay character in the film and he is possibly its most repulsive character. Personally, I found Bruno funny in a sick and twisted way. I kind of appreciated the way some of the Bruno scenes added a bit of humor to a pretty bleak film.

So I was not offended. (I loved Enter the Void.) And I am a walking, talking, textbook example of a six on the Kinsey scale. But then, I also think Cruising is an unjustly maligned film, so I am not always the most politically correct homo.

[zedz]

What goes on in his films, admittedly I haven't seen the last two but from the sounds of it he hasn't grownup, is the equivalent to a childish view of gays as cootie having monsters.

Well, I don't know the earlier films, but that's exactly the approach of Enter the Void. A second-string cipher warns a first-string cipher that a third-string cipher "likes boys" and thus first-string cipher must BEWARE! because the Evil Homosexual is likely to spike his drink, rape him and shit in his mouth (I wish this was an exaggeration!) Neither the characters nor the film do anything to suggest that this is an unlikely scenario or an unreasonable supposition to make. Caveat emptor.

[zedz]

Maybe I'm a terrible gay-hating bastard and just don't know it, but I didn't catch onto any homophobia in this film...? I haven't yet seen Irreversible so I can't comment on that, but what are you guys referring to in regards to Enter the Void?

I've described the key exchange in the dedicated Navel-Gazing thread. It's a brief scene, but it's completely gratuitous and completely homophobic. There's no need for Bruno to be gay except to provide Noe with someone to vent his hatred against, through his favoured characters.

[Ruh-roh]

Maybe I'm a terrible gay-hating bastard and just don't know it, but I didn't catch onto any homophobia in this film...? I haven't yet seen Irreversible so I can't comment on that, but what are you guys referring to in regards to Enter the Void?

I've described the key exchange in the dedicated Navel-Gazing thread. It's a brief scene, but it's completely gratuitous and completely homophobic. There's no need for Bruno to be gay except to provide Noe with someone to vent his hatred against, through his favoured characters.

I definitely see your point regarding Bruno. And I am kind of on the fence about it. I guess it didn't seem to stand out as gratuitous to me in a film of such excess, loaded with gruesome people and occurrences. And, like I said, I found the Bruno stuff pretty funny. (I seem to remember people around me chuckling quite a bit as well when his particular fetish is explained.) So if Noé really wants us to feel contempt for Bruno, I don't think he succeeded. Bruno just struck me as an amusingly over-the-top sleazebag. The kind of obscenely villainous character you can get a guilty pleasure out of watching. I don't mean this to sound like I'm being a smart ass, but I'm kind of tempted to say, sure there is no need for Bruno to be gay, but is there really any need for him to not be gay? I mean, I'm a little wary of treating gayness as this special thing in movies that needs to be treated with special care and sensitivity. If it were not for Irreversible, I probably would not have given the matter that much thought. Irreversible certainly did strike me as ludicrously homophobic. I really think that if I hadn't already seen Irreversible I wouldn't have come out of Enter the Void suspecting Noé of harboring some deep-seated and irrational fears of the gays.

[colinr0380]

The homophobia problem with Irreversible for me wasn't the portrayal of most of the clients or the gay club in general ("Fist me! Fist me!") or even the nasty bisexual rapist character who Bellucci unfortunately encounters in the tunnel but more seemed to be the way that, during Marcus's fight in the club with the man he (wrongly, since the real perpetrator is standing next to him) believes to have assaulted Alex in the underpass, the brawlers are surrounded by all the 'innocent' men frequenting the club who appear to take great (sexual?) pleasure in goading them on, from Marcus's arm being broken to the even more savage and drawn out fire extinguisher head beating which appears to leave them in awe of the savagery on display.

I haven't seen Enter The Void yet but based on Irreversible, Seul Contre Tous and the Destricted short as long as the continued "chase me! chase me!" ambiguous antics of Noe with regards to homosexuals (though he did make a cameo as a masturbating client in the gay club charmingly named the Rectum) is balanced by a more grown up attitude to his view of ethnics as Fagin-style criminal types (but less lovable), and women as provocatively dressed, ambiguously gendered sex objects almost begging to be raped, beaten (or both in various combinations), he might make a better film.

You mean he hasn't really grown up, yet? Oops, how surprising.

But to be more serious, and to relate back to a point made by zedz on Enter The Void that I would generally agree with, I think Noe's films have this ambition to be something grander than any particular story, but it seems that he has his eyes on this bigger overarching idea to the detriment of the characters and their basic situations.

To that end I don't think his films have really proved themselves smart enough yet to have really considered the implications of using easy stereotype characters as shorthands to achieve his greater goals, and aside from audiences that may be insulted by such shorthands (which again I don't think Noe has thought through enough about to have intended as such, especially since Irreversible for example brushes over so many groups from men to women, Arabs to intellectuals, as well as homosexuals with stereotypes/archetypes), it also ends up undermining some of the spectacular technical achievements and 'greater messages' that Noe may be wanting to provide.

The problem is that he keeps insisting on bringing up many of these inflammatory themes and then handling them in the most cack-handed, naive and childish manner. Maybe when he learns to care for his characters rather than just moving them around like chess pieces from one horror to another, he might make something that actually builds on the technical and visual expertise of his films, rather than just leaving the visuals to do all the work.

Add these issues to, for me, the far more problematic characteristic of Noe's work - the way that very simple (often naive) grand messages are over embellished and then repetitively bludgeoned into an audience again and again through a combination of aggressive visuals and overly drawn out running times, and you have films that should always be approached with caution and a thick skin, and not just for their 'extreme' subject matter.

[Michael]

When Irreversible was new, I thought it was so homophobic and made it known here. I got attacked immediately even by some of the forums gay members. I tried to watch it again and again only to try to "de-homophobize" the film and it was impossible. Here in the film, gay men are painted as soulless, vulgar, diseased, violent, gross as we dive into the sticky murky red-lit underground world of them orgying mindlessly. The film turns sunny-bright as we spend the morning with a straight couple caressing and loving in such warm bliss. How enthralling.