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17-03-2006, 01:36 AM
Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, as you've probably heard, is one of those films that polarizes opinions. Start a conversation with anyone who's seen it and you'll get an immediate reaction: one of disgust or one of shocked reverence. The viewer gets the impression that either of these are exactly what the director was trying to elicit.
Its simple story is told, Memento-style, in a progression of flashbacks, starting from assault and graphically-depicted murder at a seedy gay sex club and working its way back through the night to explain how we got there. In terms of plot, the story is fairly straightforward: it's a no-frills revenge tale, with nary a twist or double-cross in sight. What makes the film unique is the visual language Noe uses to tell this story.
From the opening credits (which are actually the closing credits, considering the lack of them at the end of the movie) the viewer is shown explicitly that he is going to have his perception skewed. The credits begin to twist off the screen before they are finished, and the camera behaves similarly all through the movie. It is constantly on the move, sometimes sickeningly so, twisting and shunting the viewer around the protagonists. The camera's floatiness is off-putting to begin with - the film opens with a lazy and vertigo-inducing tracking shot around, over and through the apartment building next to the sex club. However, by the time we figure out what's going on plot-wise, we hardly notice that the camera seems to fly through the glass of a moving car's window, through narrow corridors and even through walls.
Noe's restless camerawork also provides a gut-punch in the film's core scene; tellingly, the camera lingers stone-still for nine agonizingly uncomfortable minutes on the brutal rape and assault which forms the motivation for the film's vengeful anti-heroes.
Make no mistake, Irreversible is very difficult to watch. The camerawork stops just shy of sickening in parts, plus there are two incidents of full-on, "fucking hell", rotten dot com visceral cold violence that will leave you with the taste of bile in the back of your throat. However, if you can stand to have your perceptions altered for a while, Irreversible is definitely worth a look, if only to get you thinking about destiny, fate, time, and the role the human heart plays in it all.
Its simple story is told, Memento-style, in a progression of flashbacks, starting from assault and graphically-depicted murder at a seedy gay sex club and working its way back through the night to explain how we got there. In terms of plot, the story is fairly straightforward: it's a no-frills revenge tale, with nary a twist or double-cross in sight. What makes the film unique is the visual language Noe uses to tell this story.
From the opening credits (which are actually the closing credits, considering the lack of them at the end of the movie) the viewer is shown explicitly that he is going to have his perception skewed. The credits begin to twist off the screen before they are finished, and the camera behaves similarly all through the movie. It is constantly on the move, sometimes sickeningly so, twisting and shunting the viewer around the protagonists. The camera's floatiness is off-putting to begin with - the film opens with a lazy and vertigo-inducing tracking shot around, over and through the apartment building next to the sex club. However, by the time we figure out what's going on plot-wise, we hardly notice that the camera seems to fly through the glass of a moving car's window, through narrow corridors and even through walls.
Noe's restless camerawork also provides a gut-punch in the film's core scene; tellingly, the camera lingers stone-still for nine agonizingly uncomfortable minutes on the brutal rape and assault which forms the motivation for the film's vengeful anti-heroes.
Make no mistake, Irreversible is very difficult to watch. The camerawork stops just shy of sickening in parts, plus there are two incidents of full-on, "fucking hell", rotten dot com visceral cold violence that will leave you with the taste of bile in the back of your throat. However, if you can stand to have your perceptions altered for a while, Irreversible is definitely worth a look, if only to get you thinking about destiny, fate, time, and the role the human heart plays in it all.