Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé, 2009)

[mfunk9786]

Hype Williams must've seen Enter the Void; directs new Kanye West video.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Shameless. Hype Williams has always sucked, yet more evidence.

[colinr0380]

I was also thinking that the lack of a propulsive Bangalter soundtrack on Enter The Void was another thing that caused the film to appear to drag much more (apparently he was busy with the Daft Punk soundtrack for Tron: Legacy at the time, so just organised the music rather than composed specific pieces as on Irreversible). There needs to be something to give the impression of forward movement and developing action, even if it is a violently repetitive electronic beat covering the same ground over and over with minute variations (which itself would be fitting!), though I like the comment I read a while ago that this film is a form of 'drone cinema' with appropriate music to match!

EDIT: Oh, and at one point near the beginning of the film I thought to myself "I wonder if Noé wll be crass enough to insert a pre-9/11 reference into his flashback scenes to the idyllic New York childhood before the loss of Oscar and Linda's parents?", thought we had gotten away with it after the hour long précis of Oscar's life but then got the strangely inevitable shot of the intact Twin Towers near to the end of the film instead!

[zedz]

I was left thinking that 'The Void' is not death but the emptiness and pointlessness of existence

Isn't this point banged home for the umpteenth time by the final shot: POV birth followed by big "ENTER THE VOID" title (OMG! So deep!)

[mfunk9786]

I never took that as an attempt to be "deep", but more as a good-humored wink at the audience.

[Mr Pixies]

Shameless. Hype Williams has always sucked, yet more evidence.

that's pretty funny to me, the opening credits of Enter the Void was so awesome, best part of the movie, certainly worth checking out that part at least.

i liked the movie, it has nothing wrong with it, just really long, and seems like it is constructed to be something special/extravagant for all kinds of states of "consciousness", i saw it "straight" it would be cool, though maybe torturous to see it on "shrooms" would take forever to get through, etc/. it was a really depressing "life in a nutshell" film, but i think it is like a cinematic documentary on the lives that film as art expresses the human existence to be, or only be, capable of. like i am not saying it is true to my life, and what i think life really is, more of the

[Guido]

"Shrooms"?

[mfunk9786]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushrooms" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[JMULL222]

If you have the means, I highly reccomend trying them. Truly choice.

[Guido]

mfunk - sorry, I was trying to find a polite way of addressing the "wayward" nature of Mr. Pixies' post.

[mfunk9786]

It's nuts, for sure. Don't get me wrong.

[Guido]

Yes. I saw the film back in the fall, and the people I spoke to who championed the film just mystified me. I'm surely re-opening a can of worms, but I don't think I've ever seen cinephiles praise a film in such an inconclusive, roundabout, and ridiculous way. I'm not passing judgment on those who posted here in this thread, as I've not read it in its entirety, but the fan reaction here in Montreal I found deeply deplorable. How is possible, with a film as repugnant as Enter the Void, to focus your enthusiasm solely on its form? The general ignorance towards the film's thematic content is pretty frightening.

[FerdinandGriffon]

What's really nuts is how all of this enthusiasm is focused solely on the ambition of the form, ambition which is very far from being carried through into realization. This is a totally linear, textbook narrative film, which, solely because of the gimmick of one of the primary shots being a wobbly overhead, manages to pass itself off as something more. Passing the camera over an empty, gray backdrop between scenes does not a new perspective make.
That the thematic content is repugnant, stupid, and puerile is for me a minor issue next to the pretension of its delivery.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Dull film about dull drug user, dull stripper and dull Eastern religion. Drug users are dull. Strippers are dull. Eastern religion is dull.

[mfunk9786]

Most of those things you listed are far from dull.

[aox]

dull post?

[zombeaner]

I thought it was only okay. I understood it, but it was far too meditative. Spending 5-10 minutes wandering overhead waiting for something not particularly dramatic to happen got boring after a while. I understand that life isn't full of dramatic moments, but movies should be.

That being said, I want to see it again to make sure I didn't miss anything...

[knives]

Most of those things you listed are far from dull.

In theory yes, but wouldn't it be fair to say that Noe develops them in as dull a manner as possible? For me to leave the theater unaffected by those elements is a failure on Noe's part especially seeing as how the film seems intended as a provocative.

[oldsheperd]

I really appreciated the creativity of Noe, but anyone going into the film expecting anything more than a paper thin plot will be horribly disappointed. Anyway, I don't think Noe was particularly interested in the plot. I did get my fill of naked women though which is weird. Nudity over 2 1/2 hours can get boring. I had a hard time departing with my copy(TomReagan can tell you) but I don't think I'd really watch it again. I got pretty nauseous the first time.

[mfunk9786]

I didn't feel provoked by the sex/violence/drug use in the film but I found the whole thing rather heartwrenching, on top of the fact that it was a stunning technical achievement. I just don't have the same vitriol towards Noé that others seem to.

[oldsheperd]

Does anyone else here think that Nathan Brown's character was a bit more than a little responsible for his sister's state? When Paz De La Huerta arrives in Tokyo, and just previously over the phone, she seems pretty naive to the whole drugs, sex, stripping thing. That's what I saw it as except for Noe drops the ball when she transitions her character.

[knives]

stunning technical achievement.

Pardon the ignorance, but how was it that? As many have said the camera movement is pretty basic and the repetition makes the length not needed. If you're referring to the CGI, well as Noe himself said 2001.

[JMULL222]

I think you guys are being a bit overly academic for a film wherein Gaspar Noe literally busts a nut into the camera during the 'climax' of the last reel. It's a psychedelic light show, an opressively black comedy, or a purely cinematic assault on the senses (or, all of the above). I think if you look at it as much more than that, your taking it much more seriously than Gaspar did.

[knives]

Yeah, it’s one thing. I don’t know if I should worry or not, but the image of the penis coming at the camera at the end was not meant to be funny. People are laughing so much. I don’t know if it’s a nervous reaction or because it’s really funny. But I thought it would be epic or mythological or dramatic, like the rest of the movie. Or dream. If you saw that in your own dreams, you would not laugh.

The source is an AVC interview I linked to who knows how many pages back. Point is is that Noe is putting more weight on the film than it deserves.

[oh yeah]

I think you guys are being a bit overly academic for a film wherein Gaspar Noe literally busts a nut into the camera during the 'climax' of the last reel. It's a psychedelic light show, an opressively black comedy, or a purely cinematic assault on the senses (or, all of the above). I think if you look at it as much more than that, your taking it much more seriously than Gaspar did.

If the film's not meant to be taken entirely seriously then why does it all feel so relentlessly heavy-handed and punishing? I found scarcely any real humor throughout, and the novelty of the first half-hour or so (with the POV technique being fairly interesting and that DMT trip nicely rendered) promptly gives way to two seemingly endless hours of repetitious dead parents flashbacks, aborted fetus camera-mugging, joyless sex and other various cheerful material.

Like many others, I admired the form (this has been stated in so many different ways it's almost a cliche by now!) but found the content sorely lacking. The feeling I got coming away from it was one of utter emptiness. Now, certain films I do like give off an "empty" or even "hopeless" feeling as well, but this is a unique emptiness in that I feel crushed and depressed without feeling like I've seen anything of worth or interest, just a lot of shock tactics and show-y technique attempting to pound me into submission. A recent first-time viewing of Haneke's The Seventh Continent yielded a similar feeling, yet at least that film shows a little restraint, and is interesting existentially as opposed to Noe's threadbare psychedelic nihlism. (Sorry, I'm probably starting to sound a bit like Armond White here - probably best not to compare two relatively unrelated films...)