Irreversible

It's hard to recommend something that makes you recoil, that sickens you to your stomach, that pains you to watch. But, what happens when that which makes you grimace is the same thing which shows you a perspective on beauty--a perspective you've never seen before in film? What happens when, the very same thing which made you cringe and put your hand to your chest, leaves you with a message that so many other directors have failed to create?

Just as how the camera floats around, hovers, twists and turns as it does between edits, the emotions summoned within while watching Irreversible do the same. A teeter-totter of disgust and beauty, dread and life, horror and love. I grimaced as I sympathized, I shuddered as my sympathy even morphed in and out of empathy.

Some art, whether it be in the written form or on the screen, speak of stories that need to be told no matter how tough, and are told in a manner which plays nobody's fool, rounds no corners, does not add a "soft filter" to beautify its content. Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark , Murakami Ryu's Almost Transparent Blue come to mind--a dissection of the grotesque yet tangible reality of how savagely unsympathetic life can be, humans can be, society can be. And in the case of Irreversible, how brutal the passage of time can be. Yet, somewhere during the process of experiencing these crippling stories of tragedy, by the end, the theme you're left with is unexpectedly one of life. Mixed in that lump of sadness and brutality which remains lodged in your throat are the small things that which make up life itself; the moments which most of us fail to ever appreciate, to notice and understand, have been laid out before us--have been shown to us with such a new and fierce light all but none can fail to recognize them.

After watching this film it's as if the viewer has been imparted with some rare wisdom, has been given the chance to look back on what it means to live, to make every moment worth its value. Irreversible's director, Gaspar Noe, has taken you into the void, to the underworld and shown you how dark it can be, and has thereafter returned you, unscathed back to present day, plopped back down in your living room in front of your now black TV screen, the credits finished rolling. Now, the question that is being begged is this: what have you learned? What are you going to do with this new wisdom, this proverbial elixir, which you have been given?

Irreversible is just that, a movie which takes you on one of the most brutal journeys, but takes you backwards, starting with the last scene of the day first, and the first scene, last. The movie begins in hell, and ends by showing us the opposite of what hell is. And it is within this technique of moving "backwards", of knowing the end of the tale, of knowing who the characters are before you know their story, is what provides you with an uncanny insight into how humans work, and of course, makes you simultaneously aware of how you--the viewer--works. For, as you react to each scene, you are now casting judgments based on information you shouldn't already know. This movie is not only an insight, but an experiment on action/reaction, cause/effect, perhaps even what "fate" means to us--and you're the petri dish.

Now, this film has received plenty of mixed reactions, and as it should. Called everything from gratuitous, unskilled, amateur, thoughtlessly shocking, to distasteful. Yet these are not simple critiques but are reasons alone to watch the film. For, Irreversible is, above everything else, challenging. It would be hard for me to watch every scene in its entirety once again, but then again the images have been burnt into my mind along with its message and linger there, so perhaps I need not watch it again. It is a rare thing when such a movie comes along, one which questions the audience, ones which goes a step further than the rest-- whether mistakingly or not.

I debated turning off the movie after ten minutes into it, indeed I covered half the screen at times (and this is coming from someone who has never done such a thing before). I asked my self "why do I need to see this? What's the point?" And, in a funny way, in the end that's the exact reason which kept me watching. For, this movie is all about "its point", and it can only come to you by the last scene of the movie, which is also the first scene of the day in the life of the characters.

The question is whether you can make it to the end of this movie or not.

What the critics have said:
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"Likely the worst movie of the year, Irreversible exhibits fascist, gay-bashing tendencies, goes backwards for no reason, dizzies you with aimless camera work, and covers its banality with a veneer of pseudo intellectual bull."

"Irredeemable...just a pointlessly nasty violence-and-vengeance tale told backwards for 'effect.'"

"Excruciating exercise in voyeurism, provocation and pretentiousness."

"I hope people who go to see this don't walk out in the first ten minutes or after that scene, because I think you have to experience the entire film. And then you can decide whether or not you're offended by it."

"At once overwhelming and inconsequential, harrowing and banal, gimmicky and humourless, overheated and undercooked, this mega-hyped French movie may represent the ultimate triumph of cynicism in the global trade in non-English-language movies."

Plot Outline taken from IMDB:
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Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex (Monica Bellucci) is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass. Her boyfriend and ex-lover take matters into their own hands by hiring two criminals to help them find the rapist so that they can exact revenge. A simultaneously beautiful and terrible examination of the destructive nature of cause and effect, and how time destroys everything.