BD 325 Martyrs

[Finch]

SYNOPSIS
The rare film with a reputation that speaks for itself, Martyrs is perhaps the defining film of the New French Extremity movement and director Pascal Laugier’s masterpiece. Horrifying and thought-provoking in equal measure, it is a deeply philosophical and challenging work of extreme cinema – and undoubtedly one of the finest horror films produced in the twenty-first century.

In 1971, a young Lucie Jurin (Jessie Pham) manages to escape from a slaughterhouse in which she has been subjected to unspeakable torture. Placed in an orphanage, she forms a strong bond with Anna (Erika Scott), who tries to help her to recover from her trauma. Fifteen years later and now in adulthood, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) breaks into the isolated home of the Belford family, believing that they were involved in the horrific abuse she suffered in childhood. When she receives a call from Lucie, Anna (Morjana Alaoui) rushes to her aid – but soon comes to regret ever having set foot in the Belford house, where she will experience things beyond human comprehension.

Featuring heartbreaking performances by its two female leads and truly shocking imagery that lingers long in the mind courtesy of special effects designer Benoît Lestang, Martyrs has risen above debates surrounding “torture porn” to emerge as one of the truly great works of extreme cinema. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the film on 4K UHD for the first time anywhere in the world from a stunning brand new 4K restoration, accompanied by a wealth of new and archival extras.

SPECIAL FEATURES
Limited Edition Hardbound Set [4000 copies]
Dual format edition including both UHD (Region Free) and Blu-ray (Region B)
Limited edition hardcase featuring new artwork by Nick Charge
Limited edition 100-page book featuring new cover artwork by Nick Charge and writing on Martyrs by film critic Anton Bitel and horror scholars Reece Goodall, Steve Jones, Mary Going and Laura Mee
Limited edition fold-out poster featuring new artwork and original poster art
New 4K restoration by Eureka Entertainment from the original camera negative
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation presented in Dolby Vision HDR (HDR10 compatible)
Original French audio (5.1 and stereo options)
Optional English subtitles, newly revised for this release
New audio commentary with Nia Edwards-Behi, co-director of Abertoir Horror Film Festival
Revisiting the Belford House – new interview with lead actor Mylène Jampanoï
Beauty and Brutality – new interview with New French Extremity expert Alice Haylett Bryan
Over Her Flayed Body – new video essay on Martyrs and body horror by Xavier Aldana Reyes, author of Contemporary Body Horror
Organic Chronicles – archival feature-length documentary on the making of Martyrs
Archival interview with director Pascal Laugier
Archival interview with special effects designer Benoît Lestang
Stills Gallery
Trailers
**All extras subject to change

[tenia]

There are movies I don't like, and there are a very small group of movies I actively hate. This is one of these unhappy fews, which parades as "thought-provoking" and "deeply philosophical" but actually is a very dumb superficial predictable movie that isn't much above what Gaspar Noé could have written, except you also get Laugier's special brand gimmick which is torturing women in various ways. Yay.

I'm still laughing at Laugier's surprise when the movie got hit with a severe theatrical age classification in France : what did he expect ? It's an extremely graphic button-pushing movie. This isn't going to pass the equivalent of a 15 rating (UK) or R rating (US). It's instead, well, going to push people's buttons, and he went so far as saying getting such a reaction was making him afraid "cinema will become aseptised and all we'll get on the screens are made-for-tv content". We do have a classification issue in France, in that our 18 rating is more restrictive legally than just setting the age limitation above the 16 rating by 2 years, but also come with distribution restrictions, but again, what did he expect with such a specifically graphic movie ?

Fun fact : Laugier strongly objected the movie being considered as a part of the New French Extremity movement.

[The Curious Sofa]

I would agree and I'm not sure most of the films under the banner of the New French Extremity are any good. I've always felt that what was dismissed as "torture porn" in American horror during the same period was suddenly acclaimed by the horror community when it came with subtitles. This is little more than a superficial provocation of a film, cloaking its misogyny in the pretension of a philosophical conceit that falls apart the moment you think about it. Laugier may object, but he's since proven to be a flash in the pan, following this with two utterly unremarkable horror movies.
I hated Aja's High Tension just as much, but at least he's gone on to become a decent journeyman director in the genre.

[yoloswegmaster]

If I hated High Tension, is it likely that I'm going to hate this?

[tenia]

I would agree and with the exception of I'm not sure most of the films under the banner of the New French Extremity are any good. I've always felt that what was dismissed as "torture porn" in American horror during the same period was suddenly acclaimed by the horror community when it came with subtitles.

To be fair, I'm not even sure we use this classification of a movement, which was coined in the US, in France. It also looks to me like this is being applied retrospectively to a lot of very different things, which wouldn't have been bundled together at that moment. I don't think anyone back then would have put together things like A l'intérieur, Twentynine Palms, Ma mère, Romance and Sheitan. This seems applied retrospectively because those movies kinda share some thematics, but that's not what was being studied back then. Sheitan and A l'intérieur wouldn't have been put together even within the specifics of horror movies, and Titane and Climax would never have been considered similar back then either.

It's a very weird thing to me.

And then, there is the question of New French Extremity, or in the present case, New French Horror compared to torture porn (with Laugier having said that Hostel was a big inspiration for him), and I think it's just a question of perceived quality ? Most of US "torture porn" movies seemed to me as mediocre at best (and I'm speaking as someone who willingly went to see Hostel 2 in theaters on its release day), while several New French Horror movies are perceived as very good. I suppose the issue here is that if you're looking at it through, say, Laugier or Xavier Gens' output, you're not really going to understand such a potential difference. But those are the movies often placed in front : Martyrs, Saint Ange, Frontières, ... Add Them or Sheitan, and yeah, those are just not very good movies too, but subtitled. I don't believe anyone would try and market Hostel as "thought-provoking" and "deeply philosophical", but Martyrs brings as much "thought-provocation" and philosophical depth to its theologistic themes than Hostel to its discussion of western-privileged capitalistic tourism. But at least, I don't recall Hostel self-agrandizing himself into such a thing. And at least, the last act of Hostel doesn't have a dozen retirees suddenly arriving on-screen as if from a French daily TV novella usually broadcasted from 7 to 8pm.

I hated Aja's High Tension just as much, but at least he's gone on to become a decent journeyman director in the genre.

I think High Tension is OK though it's not a very well-written movie, but at least indeed, Aja managed to prove he's at least an OK director (even if his filmography isn't really filled with little gems). That's not the case for Laugier nor Gens.

If I hated High Tension, is it likely that I'm going to hate this?

I'd say it's likely you're going to hate this too.

[Mr Sausage]

I never really knew what to say to people who took this film's intellectual content seriously. If you simply loved the sleaze and gore, ok, sure--I didn't, but I get it, and that's fine. But its "ideas"? I mean, for starters, there isn't even any martyring going on here.

Spoiler

You can't be forced to martyr yourself for someone else's ideas--you're just a human sacrifice. That's the extent of the movie's intellectual content: if doing human sacrifices gets you a vision of the afterlife...wouldn't you?! Not exactly the trolley problem. Despite the self-evident stupidity, torture porn fans clung to that as justification for enjoying all the sleaze and gore. I don't know why. You'd have to be pretty confused to mistake anything in the movie for an ethical dilemma.

Anyway, I did find the two women's devotion to each other moving. Too bad Laughier was only using that as another way to stick his thumb in the viewer's eye.

[Finch]

I watched the first half of Martyrs and then bailed at the scene with the woman in the bathtub. I had reached my limit. It made me physically ill like the rape scene in Irreversible. I've so soured on French Extremity that watching In My Skin through the Radiance 4K is not high on my list even though I appreciate that it might actually be the best film by some distance.

[Mr Sausage]

It's a shame In My Skin gets lumped in with the New French Extremity. However unpleasant, it's not an exploitation film, has little graphic violence, and is mostly a psychological portrait. Its lineage is Repulsion and May rather than Martrys and Inside.

[The Curious Sofa]

I'm a big fan of Calvaire, which came out around the same time and often gets lumped in with the New French Extremity, despite being a Belgian film. But it stands apart, there are no women to torture here, as it explores an exclusively male community. With its absurdist humor and exploration of gender, it's closer in tone to something like Polanski's The Tenant than anything typically associated with the NFE. Maléfique, another early-2000s French horror film, tends to get overlooked because it doesn't fit the NFE mold and came out at the wrong time. But in my opinion, it's one of the best Lovecraftian horror films ever.

I'm just always surprised by how often Martyrs shows up near the top of "greatest horror movies of the 21st century" lists, and how reverently it's treated by horror fans and critics and the same goes for Irreversible and À l’intérieur. I've always suspected that these movies struck a chord with a certain type of movie bro, simply because they made them feel something, something apparently only achievable through extremely manipulative tactics. And of course, the art-house cachet of subtitles doesn't hurt either.

[colinr0380]

I'll stand up for Martyrs as certainly the best of the "New French Extremity" wave, and maybe one of the best (at least horror) films of the 21st century so far. I should say that, despite Ils/Them, which I really do not care for, that I like most of the other films in the wave with caveats: Switchblade Romance/Haute Tension (which I seem to remember kicked off the term in earnest despite Gaspar Noe, Catherine Breillat and Bruno Dumont making shocking films earlier on) is brilliantly tense for the majority of its duration in its intimate connection with the main character until the final act twist happens which kind of severs the audience's connection with them permanently, although admittedly it does allow for a cathartically gory final showdown and provides the idea that even the biggest monsters want to be the heroes of their stories, riding to the rescue. (Weirdly Them/Ils has almost exactly the same 'issue' of being really brilliantly tense for the majority of the time, and then has a polarising twist to it - the difference is that Switchblade Romance is not trying to pretend it is 'based on a true story', unlike Them); Frontier(s) starts extremely provocatively with its ethnically diverse band of reprobates escaping from their riot-riven burning inner city Banlieues only to find your classic even more depraved rural farm types waiting to meet them; to add to Curious Sofa's description, Calvaire is also kind of the French version of The Wicker Man; Trouble Every Day and In My Skin are the 'arthouse' entries of the group (arguably Breillat's Anatomy of Hell too); and my other favourite, Inside, is a really great claustrophobic thriller whose only flaw is, to perhaps reach a feature length running time, that it has one too many groups of people just 'happening' to turn up at the heroine's house over the course of the evening - despite the presence of a pre-A Prophet Tahar Rahim in that sequence, really the whole section with the cops and criminal breaking down outside the house could be entirely removed without anything being lost from that film, as they are only really there to add more victims to the pile of bodies.

And then Martyrs towers over everything else. It certainly is the most confrontationally thought-provoking one and unfraid to deal with really uncomfortable topics of vengeance and retribution (and whether an eye for an eye can ever soothe an abused soul, or whether anyone can ever truly escape a cycle of abuse without becoming an abuser themselves), and whether dragging someone else into your private Hell, and forcing them to share your point of view, might be the most selfish act of all. Am I talking about the first half of the film; or the second? Or does one mirror the other, just on a much larger cabalistic scale? What is worse: individual abuse being tolerated by society through blind-eyed incompetence or just neglect; or finding out that the society as a whole is corrupt to the core? Is knowing that it was 'nothing personal', or personally directed, or done for a 'greater cause' a slight comfort, or even more exisentially terrifying?

I appreciate Mr Sausage's point, but that fundamental hypocrisy of the dispassionate towards ritual abuse cabal is at the heart of the irony of the film, and the ambivalent ending - can someone else ever truly feel the depths of pain you are experiencing, mentally or physically? How can you experience something by proxy, or force someone to experience it on your behalf, and ever really know for sure without taking the journey yourself? And if you do not have the nerve to actually do the job yourself, don't then make others unwillingly take on that burden for you.

Spoiler

In that sense the key to the film is that contrast where because of the love for her friend Anna willingly commits herself to the horrific situation of the first half of the film. She kind of gets 'rewarded' for her loyalty by her friend having been correct all along about the family being evil. The only way to make Lucie 'understandable' in her cold blooded murders is to have an even more extreme revelation to 'justify' them. But much as she tries her friend can never find peace and cannot save herself from the ghosts in her head. Anna being the only witness to her friend's torment and able to tell her story would be the catharsis offered by a simpler film. But Martyrs never offers that comfort, even of just getting the story out there and exposing the truth; and where Anna was initially a shocked but willing participant in the earlier horror eventually she is forced into being the unwilling substitute for other agendas. Much as the term 'martyr' can be the lofty term applied in retrospect to justify the murder of those dispatched for more down to earth reasons.

EDIT: I do like tenia's 'back to the 70s' comment in his comment below, because that was the era of giallo films with their shadowy cabals of conspirators and sex cults such as All The Colours of the Dark, Short Night of the Glass Dolls and The Case of the Bloody Iris. I don't know if Martyrs is consciously alluding to it, but its kind of like a film like Funny Games smashing head on into Eyes Wide Shut! And Martyrs also weirdly makes real life seem disappointingly mundane in comparison, because whatever comes out about what the heck was going on at the Diddy and Epstein gatherings of selected coteries of VIP guests, I highly doubt it was anything to do with heady theological explorations into the nature of the afterlife!

[tenia]

And then Martyrs towers over everything else. It certainly is the most confrontationally thought-provoking one and unfraid to deal with really uncomfortable topics of vengeance and retribution (and whether an eye for an eye can ever soothe an abused soul, or whether anyone can ever truly escape a cycle of abuse without becoming an abuser themselves), and whether dragging someone else into your private Hell, and forcing them to share your point of view, might be the most selfish act of all. Am I talking about the first half of the film; or the second? Or does one mirror the other, just on a much larger cabalistic scale? What is worse: individual abuse being tolerated by society through blind-eyed incompetence or just neglect; or finding out that the society as a whole is corrupt to the core? Is knowing that it was 'nothing personal', or personally directed, or done for a 'greater cause' a slight comfort, or even more exisentially terrifying?

My issue is that this was a way more interesting read that what the movie diegetically has to offer anywhere.
I'd also argue that as a "tense" movie, it's a slog; as a story, it's way too predictable; as a movie, it's not that well executed. I guess the ideas were better than their execution, and that's what one gets.
For instance, I'm interested in what you're making of the ending because, for me, it's a cop-out of an ending, another way for the movie to be lazy, and all of this to remain mostly gratuitous cinematographically. Which is why I'm always angry about Laugier's laughable defense of the movie's classification : this is the movie he chose to made, a willingly over-the-top one that consciously goes out of its way to go past some thresholds. And when the movie cops out about the why, and it's

Spoiler

a bunch of cultish old people running after a mirage

, well, duh.
But I agree with Mr Sausage : "martyrdom" is just one of the many ways the movie drapes itself in depth while this is not it.

Spoiler

It's just a bunch of cultish old people doing human sacrifice, just like you'd find in your random 70s italian exploitation movie.

[Mr Sausage]

I have trouble seeing Martyrs as a serious look at abuse because its portrait of abuse feels so inauthentic. The film takes the psychological effect of abuse for granted, mostly skims over the interior worlds of its victims and victimizers, and yet depicts all the physical violence they endure/perpetrate in granular detail. I think that shows well enough where its priorities lie. This is not a movie about what it’s like to’ve been abused; the violence is not a vehicle through which the film explores a thorny social issue. The violence and despair is the film’s whole reason for being, and the rest is there to make everyone’s consciences lie a little easier.

Literary critic Eric Griffiths said it best when discussing the extremity of Jacobean revenge tragedy:

...a main part of the pleasures of these plays [ie. revenge plays] is that they provide lots of ‘beautiful wickedness’, as the Wicked Witch of the West calls it in The Wizard of Oz, while at the same time amply supplying moralistic alibis to salve the consciences of author and audience as they revel in sleaze and gore.

Except Jacobean revenge tragedies are a lot of fun, and Martyrs exists to make sure you have no fun whatsoever. But it’s the same design philosophy: indulge in base emotions but shove in a few serious ideas at the end to disguise the fact.

[therewillbeblus]

I have a foggy memory of the film, but I recall it being an intense commentary on all institutions that preach welfare for the people but have ulterior motives that are selfish. A clear allegory is subverted by torturing the 'witnesses' (martyrs) to get details on the afterlife, paining its people (and forcing them to be their people) for selfish gains, but isn't the 'idea' to give the people salvation, transcendence, the sublime? The leaders certainly seem cold and sociopathic, but isn't it a trying process to torture and submit others to trials, which somewhat ambiguously allows some credit for attempting to give what's best for the people, when you know what is best and what the cost of not participating is? Is it like the inverse of a devout Catholic begging their agnostic friend to find Jesus because they believe they know what will happen to their loved one if they don't?

I don't think the film sets up its characters or scenarios to really earn such a charitable reading, but I remember thinking they were going for something in that direction. I could be very wrong, though I don't particularly feel like revisiting my copy in the near future to find out!

[Mr Sausage]

Calling the film a "commentary" is generosity to make Jesus blush! At best the film adumbrates its themes. Even the martyrology theme (which, again, is incoherent because these are human sacrifices, not martyrs) only comes up, what, in the last third and is confined to a single speech? We spend scene after scene after scene witnessing torture in every miserable detail, but only two or three small scenes at most on any themes. The film is a series of 'gotcha!' reveals and transgressive (tho' still conventional) situations. The movie's final reveal, the martyr stuff, could be anything.

You can tell the director came up with a series of independent scenes he liked, but found himself without a throughline, forcing him to just make something up at the end. So tenia is bang on when he says:

Spoiler

"martyrdom" is just one of the many ways the movie drapes itself in depth while this is not it. It's just a bunch of cultish old people doing human sacrifice, just like you'd find in your random 70s italian exploitation movie.

Italian exploitation would often do this, especially the more dreamy and off kilter stuff: they'd get to a point where suddenly the bizarre atmosphere and non-sequitor imagery had to be explained, so they'd stump for some cult of old people setting up some elaborate human sacrifice, often with the idea that the subject needed to be terrorized first to make the sacrifice especially good. This was always a let down. I have one big example in mind, but I don't want to say which one because it'd spoil the movie.

Martyrs is no different. It's chock full of cliches and conventional ideas. The rich and powerful are up to no good? You don't say. The bourgeois family isn't actually so wholesome, but hides dark secrets under the surface? That idea's as old as the bourgeois itself. Ultimate pain is transcendent? Clive Barker deserves a royalty cheque.

The film gestures at ideas. It doesn't contain them. What it does contain is a non-stop parade of extravagant violence always trying to one-up itself.

[colinr0380]

I guess the only thing we could all agree on is to not do a Jordan Peele and recommend the film to unsuspecting and innocent third parties!

[Captain Paranoia]

This is probably the last title I'd ever imagine being featured in the Masters of Cinema lineup (The film feels more at home with Second Sight than Eureka), not necessarily a complaint (probably because it's best not to complain about films I've never seen) but certainly a surprirse. I know It will never likely happen, but i'm trying to imagine the reaction if Chaos (the utterly repugnant DeFalco horror feature that is probably one of my least favorite movies, not the Giglio/Statham action flick I've never seen) was announced for the line (Or Murder-Set-Pieces if you want to go with something that would be...not necessarily a miracle but certainly surprising to see a release in the UK).

[colinr0380]

"Coming soon: our new Marian Dora line!"

[Finch]

Eureka are going to add an extra 2k copies. In a way I'm glad it's exceeding expectations because they restored this thing themselves and I'd like to think therefore they'll restore more films but hopefully not confined to the horror genre and especially this subset of films.

[colinr0380]

Mark Kermode has done an introduction to Martyrs on the BFI Player. Amusingly he talks about it being the closest he has come to walking out of a film without walking out. Which in Kermodian terms probably makes it more tolerable than Lars von Trier's The Idiots, which he infamously got thrown out for heckling at during its Cannes screening!

[thirtyframesasecond]

I'm not sure I got much from this either. It's quite an unpleasant watch and if that was it's sole purpose, it would succeed. But I'm not sure it warrants the ethical and philosophical conversations had about the film. Funnily enough I watched The Passion of the Christmas again on the same day. Now that's a violent film that I feel something watching (and I'm not even religious). Though we can talk at length about whether this is gratuitous or not.

[tenia]

It most certainly wants to have a theological subtext, but instead, it's just Laugier trying to find a reason to subject women to various kind of abuses.