Irreversible (2002)

I’m with you guys on this. It’s a pretty tough watch and one of the worst films of the French Smut that was being churned out in the late 90’s/early 00’s.

For what it’s worth the film succeeds in it’s main goal – absolutely, unadulterated discomfort. The camerawork is nauseating, the bass speaker wails with a barely audible low-frequency brown-noise is, the 5.1 track is splenetic at best, the camerawork glides effortlessly twisting and turning like a 1st person blackout… add to that everything you described. As a viewing experience it’s truly nightmarish!!!

Great review, man. Not gonna lie though — you really piqued my interest in this movie. Apparently I had it on my Netflix Instant queue already, which is news to me. Judging by your review, it kind of reminds me of Antichrist. I saw that movie in the theater last summer without knowing anything about it beforehand. Let’s just say that was a movie-going experience I will never forget.

It doesn’t like something I’d ‘enjoy’. I’m not a fan of ultra violence in any context, but I really don’t like it when the violence becomes the point of the movie (ala Funny Games) and this sounds like it’s floating around the same ball park. Of course I’ve heard about the renowned rape scene but have never seen it. I guess the fact it has a nine minute torture scene is enough to put me off.

The point of the film is easy to figure out: The man that Cassel’s character brutally murders is an innocent bystander. You don’t know this, of course, as all you see is a brutal murder. You should be sickened by the sight. It doesn’t matter why he may have done it, there is no justification for this action. Right? Just in case you said, “But…”, the film has an answer. If your partner was brutally raped you would certainly have the impulse to seek revenge. The film sidesteps the idea of whether revenge is right or wrong by clearly displaying the greater problem with vigilante justice, sparked by the fact that the man who is murdered was not the rapist at all: human error is already too great to leave up to one person’s judgment, but a person blinded by rage is far less equipped to administer this justice. Thus, the film is less about the moral implications of the act of vigilante justice than it is about the great risk of vigilante justice being completely indistinguishable from cold blooded murder due to the clearly displayed human error. The great disgust that you felt initially toward the murderer is not undone because of the second crime, and thus the film denounces vigilante justice both intellectually and emotionally.

As for the structure, if the film had been told forward then the ‘beginning’ would have been simple fluff, a pleasant buffer before the later horrors. The rape scene would have been purely terrible, which would have then fallen into the exploitation trope of giving the audience a vicarious urge to see the fictional character get vengeance. When the final scene came, his killing the wrong person would simply be an anticlimax as opposed to a full on realization of the horrors of brutally murdering someone. Thus, a typical structure would have softened every point the director was trying to make. By reversing the typical structure he avoids the vicarious impulse implicit in the genre and replaces it only with justified horror, and the rape scene then becomes not only brutally violent but also an elimination of the possibility of the earlier murder to be justified. The ‘beginning’ of the film, instead of being enjoyable fluff, is instead a tragic lamentation of the cost of violence, no matter who inflicts it. As such, every element of the film is enhanced by its reverse construction, and it also avoids unintentional elements of a conventional structure. Given that its reversal reveals the oft ignored pitfalls of vigilante justice that are ignored by films in the genre always ‘getting the right guy’ it shows how the film is not only a discussion of moral issues, a positive appraisal of life and non-violence, but also a condemnation of thoughtless genre films. A good example of a genre deconstruction which also serves a greater thematic purpose.

Both Irreversible and Enter the Void are often flippantly dismissed, but a more careful analysis will reveal a very dense and creative core which is, in both cases, a simultaneously intellectual and emotional lamentation on the failings of the living and an affirmation of the possibilities of a life well lived. Check out Enter the Void, think about it, read about it. I wrote an extensive post about it a couple days ago.

I just hope that no one got hurt like this in real life because some sick bastard got “inspired”and wanted to copy this piece of crap so called artistic movie.

I just watched Irreversible for the first time this week, and I think many of the points here are quite valid, but I took a thing or two from it as well.
For one thing, the reverse chronology makes me think of every news bite i’ve seen or heard about some violent inident or another that is presented as if it occurred in a vacuum. Here, we’re presented with two random charachters hearing sirens and making assumptions the way the rest of us naturally would.’
As the film progresses, we see the ‘initial’ act itself: a fight in an underground night club goes graphically murderous, as we (the viewers) sit as shocked bystanders, rendered as silent as the other patrons. We see a man bludgeon another with a fire extinguisher while one of the club patrons watches in amusement. As time winds backward we see backstory unfold with details that make the earlier scenes clearer, and the cinematography and sound progressively calm down to reinforce the clarity, until we see a sunny idyllistic day with the sense of dread that Noe apparently intends us to.
The other thought I have is about the rape scene itself. I’ve read many, many reviews, analysis and gripes about the length of time the scene takes and of it’s unrelenting brutality. I’ve seen the word ‘endure’ used. Well, what a coincidence: actual rape is something that’s brutal, slows time to a crawl and is something that a victim endures. I think Gaspar Noe got it right, and so did Mier (I Spit On Your Grave) Zarchi. Both show the sexual assaults in their films without music to arificially inflate the drama/dread/pain of the acts, as no such embellishment is necessary. Noe goes beyond Zarchi by setting the camera up in a stationary position and leaves its audience to see the rape play out in real time as if we’re sitting right in front of the participants – too close to turn away but too far to be able to act. another nice touch was the figure of the man who stepped into the background and boogied thehell out of there rather than try to help Alex. I picture many viewers reacting like I did
(y’know, the old ‘I would have beaten that f$%ker’s face in’) while the question burns in my mind about what my reaction really would be if it wasn’t merely a movie.
All that being said, this film is brital but honest. If that’s too much for anyone, Disney still makes films…