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Astonishing
I have just
watched some of the most real, romantic moments I’ve ever
seen on film, and a fifteen minute anal rape and savage
beating sequence. Both were in the same movie.
I had very
much wanted to see Irreversible in theaters, but, living
where I live, seeing such a film generally requires a trip
to the City, a luxury I don’t always have. Now that I have
seen it on DVD, however, I can only imagine how the big
screen would have effected me.
Brutal.
Brutal, awful, horrible, and, at moments, wonderful… until
you remember the order of events. I honestly can’t remember
the last time a film effected me the way Irreversible has
just effected me.
You need to
know, that there is a slight gimmick involved in the movie.
Think of the title and then realize that the film is told in
reverse order. Memento anyone? Yeah, except completely
different, and shocking in a way that American main stream
film is loathe to attempt.
The first
fifteen to twenty minutes of the film almost seem like
pompous, Columbia film student crap, unbearable in
execution, mind-numbing with spinning cameras, bumping club
beats and no damn ascertainable idea what the hell is going
on.
You are
supposed to be frustrated, aggravated and even angered. Go
with it, the film is a literal experience of every emotion,
every thought, every event that occurs within it. The old
writer’s cliché, show don’t tell is in full effect here.
Not only will the film show you, but it will make you a
complete empath, but subjecting you through excruciating
pain, horror, and scene you will with would end. They
won’t. I have never, on film, seen a rape scene like the
one in this movie. It just keeps going, and going, and it’s
awful and because of the actress playing the victim, every
scream, every whimper, every bodily shock, stammer and
shudder resonate through the viewer almost as though he or
she were the one on the receiving end. Unbelievable. The
film feels the same way at the beginning when one of the
most awful and disgustingly brutal beating murders occurs in
front of an unflinching camera.
So why do
it? Why subject yourself to this? After the beating,
after the rape, why keep watching if the film is backwards,
what could happen that will matter? What happens is the
film trips lightly in to the seemingly mundane, yet
characters we thought we knew change, plots enlarge, alter
and our entire understanding of the movie erupts again.
If you are
in a tender place, I strongly caution you not to watch
this. Not some stupid, “not for the weak-stomached”
warning, I mean that if you are in an emotionally tender
spot, Gaspar Noe’s brilliantly brutal Irreversible could
break you open. This is a film of helplessness,
vulnerability and all the awful realities of the world we
are forced to inhabit. This should have gotten an Oscar,
but I don’t think the Academy was willing to subject
themselves to such a strong dose of reality and horror.
An absolute,
possibly un-rewatchable, HUGE.
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