Irreversible

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking, for the strong of stomach only
Review: This movie is not for everyone---let's just get that out of the way right now. I think most know that there is an intensely realistic rape scene, and I am not going to go into as much detail as others because I don't want to spell it all out.

Yes, the rape scene is hard to watch---IT SHOULD BE. I am tired of movies that gloss over the ugliness of rape, murder and other violent acts. As a woman (most other reviewers are male) I want men to see this movie to understand how horrifying rape really is. It happens every day, all over the world, you should know what is going on around you.

That said, what made this movie compelling to me was not only the unspooling of events in reverse (which the director used to different effect than Memento), but the stamp the preceeding events leave as you watch the later (earlier?) ones. I found it very sad to watch this beautiful young woman on the grass, completely unaware of the horrible turn her life would take so soon.

Entertaining? I guess that depends on your views. If you just want to laugh at the movies, this is not for you.

Rating:
Summary: Gaspar Noé's nihilistic nightmare
Review: Irreversible is French director Gaspar Noé's second feature film, after the mildly successful "I stand alone", released in 1998. Irreversible premiered last year at the Cannes film festival and quickly gained a cult reputation as a film that had packs of people exiting the theatre in the middle of the presentation in a state of shock. As a person well versed in shock cinema I have sadly become desensitized to a lot of on-screen violence but once in a while a film will come along that will shock me. Irreversible did more than just shock me, it sickened me. There were a couple of scenes in this film that had me choking back bile, looking away from my T.V. set and thankful that I was watching it alone and hadn't subjected anyone else into viewing this orgy of violence with me.

The entire film rolls in reverse order, starting with the ending credits. The next 20 minutes show us an uptight guy named Marcus and his friend Pierre enter a gay brothel in search of "Le Ténia", a pimp who raped Marcus' girlfriend Alex. As the movie unfolds in reverse order, we see the events that lead up to Alex's rape and the tight friendship that the three have.

The first half hour of the film is a very taxing experience on the viewer. The camera constantly spins, turns and twists in every imaginable direction. Anyone prone to seasickness or headaches might find this to be very unpleasant. Not to mention the pounding score that never lets up and pretty much muffles any dialogue on screen. Fluent in French, I fully intended to watch the film in its original version, however the constant noise of the industrial-tinged score and booming nightclub music makes it nearly impossible to make out what the characters are saying and I had to resort to switching on the English subtitles. After the first 30 minutes (which are the climax of the events since the film plays backwards) things slow down a bit and the shifting camera and loud noise finally let up, until of course Noé subjects the viewer to an absolutely horrific 9-minute rape sequence. It is easily the most shocking scene of its type that I've ever seen and it's the way it's presented to us that makes it all the more shocking. The camera never shifts, there's no ominous music, just the horrible cries of anguish of the helpless victim. This rape sequence and a gruesome death scene involving someone getting bashed in the head with a fire extinguisher 20+ times are really the only major shockers of the movie but they are such intense scenes that it is no wonder so many people at Cannes walked out on the movie.

Once the movie ended, I couldn't help but restart the movie right away and watch the first half hour again. The first time I saw these climactic scenes I felt somewhat indifferent as I didn't even know the characters yet. But I knew I'd see it in a very different light the second time around. Not since Memento had a film made me want to re-watch a major portion of the film immediately after the initial viewing. As I flicked off my T.V. set I felt disturbed but also at the same time felt like I had witnessed a truly creative piece of filmmaking by an upcoming maverick filmmaker that would have a lasting effect on me. Irreversible plays like an urban and intellectual art house version of "I spit on your grave", an all-out assault on the senses that pummeled me into submission during its mercifully short 90 minutes. It is shocking, sickening and at times thoroughly unpleasant. It is also one of the best films I've seen in quite some time.

Rating:
Summary: Viewer discretion advised for Irreversible.
Review: Irreversible was recommended to me by a friend and I did not read any of the reviews on Amazon.com. This was a serious mistake. I was unpleasantly surprised by the quality of this film by director Gaspar Noe. One viewing is not enough to understand the intentions of the director and the meaning, if there is any, of the movie. Before watching this film viewers should know:

1. The action begins at the end in violence and chaos and moves to the beginning, a montage of the starry heavens.

2. Chaos is the existential theme of this film. Any meaning to life must be individually determined by each person. God is dead and everthing is permitted. The conclusion we must reach is that the director believes the world is a violent and malevolent place and even if we are careful to avoid disaster, this is not always possible. Adults know this and don't need to be assualted by senseless violence and despicable behavior to be convinced that we can't be too careful. Suffering is universal and can't be avoided. In Irreversible, suffering is chaotic and meaningless. Revenge adds to suffering.

3. For those who want to decide for themselves what to think of the backward progression of the plot in Irreversible, the following is a summary of events from beginning to end -- reverse this list and you will start at the beginning of the film.
A. We see a montage of a spiraling universe which disolves into a scene of Alex, a beautiful young woman reading on the grass in an idyllic scene with children playing around her.
B. We cut to her apartment and her boyfriend Marcus. They are in bed and he tells her he wants to have anal sex with her. This admission will be important as the story progresses.
C. We move to a party where we are introduced to her former boyfriend Pierre, a philosopher, if we can believe it. He appears to be a somewhat shy person who is genuinely interested in Alex, in contrast to Marcus, an immature, self-centered, childish person who gets high on drugs and drink.
D. Alex leaves the party and tries to cross a busy street in Paris, I think. She decides instead to take an underground passage to cross the street and meets there a pimp called La Tenia. This man brutally rapes Alex anally, a recurring theme in the film. The rape is the longest "set piece" in the film and is gratuitous in its extended violence. Alex is beaten almost to death by La Tenia after the rape. Along with Marcus and Pierre, we watch Alex being taken to the hospital by an ambulance.
E. Marcus is determined to have revenge against the person who assaulted Alex and goes on a search, with his friend Pierre, to find this person.
F. Marcus determines that La Tenia assaulted Alex and he goes to a gay establishment called "The Rectum" to find him. In The Rectum anal sex is the norm, of course. The Rectum appears to be a recreation of Dante's Inferno.
G. La Tenia is talking with another person in The Rectum and this unidentified man is first assaulted by Marcus, who believes the man is La Tenia. This person deliberately breaks Marcus's arm before the unknown man is assaulted by Pierre. Pierre takes a large fire extinguisher and smashes the head and face of the unknown person beyond recognition, killing him in the process. This scene is among the most violent any person is likely to see at the movies.
H. The police come and take Marcus away to the hospital and arrest Pierre for murder. Pierre is told by people in the crowd that he will be anally assaulted in prison.

The movie begins with the arrest of Pierre and works its way backward to the idyllic scene of Alex reading on the grass and then the apparent chaos of the starry heavens.

4. For the most part the director has shot this film with hand held cameras giving the audience a feel for the chaos of life. The rape scene is one exception. A stationary camera is used to allow us to focus on the violence we witness.

5. The background music is also unpleasant and chaotic, supposedly mirroring what we are witnessing.

6. Only the largest of TV screens will allow the viewer to experience what the director has in mind for us. This film is meant to be seen in a theater where our senses will be truly assaulted.

7. This film is unrated, but the rating should be For Adults Only. Most adults are going to rate this film objectionable in the extreme.

Summary: If I had read this review, I would not have watched the film. Life is unpleasant enough without adding unnecessary grief when we expect entertainment. Irreversible is NOT entertainment. It is a close up and personal look at hell on earth. It is a punishing, not a pleasurable experience.

Rating:
Summary: Gaspar Noé is pushing the audience into a dark sphere...
Review: In Irreversible, the director Gaspar Noé is pushing the audience into a dark sphere where the audience is exposed to some truly brutal violence as if Noé wants to educate the ignorant minds of the masses. Thus, Noé is creating a very offensive experience as the story is told in reverse where the audience already knows of the coming events as the story unfolds. The story itself will not be revealed here, however, the violence is extremely grotesque and might cause distress and disgust among the audience members. However, behind the nastiness there is something to be pondered that might leave the audience with an echo ringing "You cannot escape your actions." The cinematography is cleverly tied together with each frame, and it leaves the audience with a disturbing and distressing cinematic experience that might affect their sleeping patterns.

Rating:
Summary: Shocking...but that's it
Review: <This review contains spoilers.>

There is no doubt that Irreversible is pretty well directed, that it is well acted, that many of its scenes are superbly realistic. The special effects, especially during the fire extinguisher scene, are nothing short of remarkable. But as far as I understand it, film is a storytelling medium, and for me this movie fails as a story.

You can't really sympathize with Markus as he hunts down the rapist because you don't yet know what happened. You don't understand how he and Pierre came to be in this situation, and all you feel is revulsion as you watch one man beat another man's brains in.

Gradually you learn how the situation spiraled out of control, and you learn that Markus ignored his girlfriend at a party until she left by herself and was brutally raped. And then you see a little of their love for each other, but by then it's too late.

Had the story been told in forward time, it might have worked better. But because of the timeline, none of the characters appear sympathetic except Alex, and she ends up in the hospital, scarred for life. Okay, so sometimes horrible things happen to people. You wish you could go back and change them, but you can't. So what? Do any of the characters undergo change or discover something about life or themselves? I guess Pierre does, the gentle ex-boyfriend who stumbles upon his capacity to kill, but I don't buy it. He follows Markus around the entire movie, trying to calm him down, and then while trying to defend him, he suddenly finds the rage to hammer a man 22 times in the head with a fire extinguisher? 22 times? This fellow would probably drop the extinguisher and run after the first disfiguring blow. But you don't know that at the beginning of the movie (end of the story), so you go with it. You have no choice. And later, when you see him in the previous scenes, you realize the gruesome murder was ridiculously out of character. Which, to me, makes the violence gratuitous. It would be a great scene if the story justified it, but without proper motivation, it's becomes shocking for the sake of shocking.

And yes, there are parallels drawn between Markus and the Tenia. We're pretty much bludgeoned in the head with them (pun intended). Yes, it's a fine line between being a brute boyfriend and an immoral rapist, but it might be interesting to reveal details about that line instead of blurring it further.

I think there are elements of a good movie here. The brutal violence doesn't make it less watchable for me--it's the relatively simple (and awkwardly structured) story, the lack of emotional texture that do that. I just don't see the point. Maybe I'm missing something. But if it's not entertaining, or it doesn't illuminate a dark area of life and show humans struggling to make it better, or SOMETHING redeeming, why make the movie? There doesn't have to be a happy ending. It doesn't have to be generic crap marketed to the masses. But if you're going to spend two hours of your life watching a movie, shouldn't you come away better (or different or changed) for having watched it?

Rating:
Summary: Irreversible (2002, Lion's Gate/Studio Canal)
Review: A few months ago, this movie was being shown in an art theatre near my hometown. However, I did not see it and at my video store, a customer had told me about the film and the rape scene and I was in shock as this customer told me that the rape scene laster for ten minutes. Shortly afterwards, I had discovered Monica Bellucci in "Malena" (which is more recommendable than this). When it was released on DVD, my video store did not carry it (and I highly understand why)! I've decided to pick up a copy for Monica Bellucci and to see what the hype was all about.

The story is told in reverse sequence as the film opens with two men coming out of a gay club called "The Rectum". One had his arm broken and is carried out on a stretcher and the other is being arrested. Amid this, some guy, who had set them up, yells out rape taunts toward them. Before, the men were in the club looking for a guy named Tenia. Finding him and without having the knowledge to identify the guy, Pierre bashes a guy in the face with a fire extinguisher over twenty times while Tenia watches. Basically, the wrong guy was killed right in front of the face of the guy who "should have" been killed. Why did all of this occur? Monica Bellucci (Alex) and Vincent Cassel (Marcus) were a couple who loved life and Alex was pregnant. She, Marcus and her ex-boyfriend, Pierre, went to a local party and they had taken a subway there. While Marcus gets high on cocaine and flirts with other women, Pierre tries to alert him before he loses Alex. She catches him high and she decides to leave the party and go home by herself. Waiting for a taxi, another lady tells her "Take the subway, it's safer". Going down the subway station, she catches Tenia beating down a transexual and he then has Alex at knifepoint and violates her (in a hard-to-watch, unpleasant scene that lasts for ten minutes). After Tenia is satisfied, he kicks her, beats her and bashed her head against the concrete. Stepping out of the party, Marcus & Pierre find Alex being carried on a stretcher into an ambulance truck. There, they meet a guy who helps them seek revenge and they run into the transexual who was beaten by Tenia and s/he tells them where Tenia hangs out at. Marcus stops at nothing to get there while Pierre procrastinates and decided to see Alex at the hospital. Meanwhile, Marcus only wants revenge.

The rape scene is very disturbing to watch and it's understandable why many people despise the movie and why many others have left the theatre. I can only imagine it was harder to watch in the theatre than it is watching it at home. At least at home, you can pause, ffwd or just stop. The rape scene in Pulp Fiction was obvious without being graphic, however, the rape scenes in American Me were long and truly disturbing and realistic. In comparison? I'd say the scene in this movie was something like the last rape scene in American Me, but much, much more graphic and obvious. The camera also stays in one place instead of it being everywhere at once amid the brutality. Due to this, many claim that this was "the best rape scene ever depicted on film". Pulp Fiction was a movie that was made to mess with people's minds. I found nothing artistic about Pulp Fiction. I understood the art in Irreversible, but I was shocked and the movie played with my mind, but not as bad as Pulp Fiction did. Yet, it was hard for me to endure.

The story had great morals to it and it shows that humans can turn into beasts, if they're pushed over the edge. It shows how people take things for granted and act as if everything will work in their favor (Marcus takes Alex for granted at the party for drugs and other women). It shows the realisms and the consequences of ravish, revenge and rage. It shows that these things are mindless (of course) and that time is the greatest enemy against people, possibilities and productivity.

It's hard for me to recommend this movie to many people (especially hyper-sensitive people, females and small children). It is not pleasant to watch for more than once or even twice (like some American movies and films by Billy Tang, Ivan lai & Martin Scorsese). This may not be new for French movies and in some Chinese Hong Kong movies I've seen, rape scenes last for five minutes. However, American movies couldn't show much of things like this, although the rape rate is higher in America than it is in France, Hong Kong and many other foreign countries (because of conservatism, high moral grounders and restrictions of pornography and children).

The DVD's special features are pretty simple as it has TV spots, trailers and samples from the awesome sountrack. The producer talks about the film in a short commentary and usually speaks of the camera effects, the rape scene's poor picture quality, the violent beginning and 3D special effects. However, the Lion's Gate company had claimed that the film was artistic. I feel that maybe the DVD should have been polished a bit more in that case (like the Signature version of Monster's Ball & Lolita).

I apologize for the spoilers, the graphic detail of the film, the comparisons of the rape scene... however, for those of you who haven't seen it, you have been cautioned! If you're a big fan of Monica Bellucci like I am (as well as foreign film lovers), go for it, but even you may be appalled!

Rating:
Summary: A lot to absorb in one viewing...
Review: I went to see this film with a certain amount of trepadition and prejudice, thinking I would hate it just because of all the hype that I'd heard beforehand. I'd seen BAISE-MOI a few years before and thought it was just junk, so i kind of expected the same here. I was quite surprised to find that I actually enjoyed the film. It starts off pretty intensely, with twirling cameras following two guys as they run through a gay bar trying to find someone. What follows is one of the most vicious depictions of a beating I've ever come across in a film. Initially it comes across as some sort of homophobic attack, but as the film unspools and gives us the backstory MEMENTO-style, you find out what lead to the attack. From then on, the intensity gets upped as you find out what lead to the attack. You find out later that the two guys who killed the dude in the gay bar did so out of revenge. There's a scene where Monica Bellucci gets raped for a solid ten minutes. It gets pretty hard to watch, but honestly, I expected worse and found the opening scene much more shocking. I disagree, however, with the people who found the film to be an exercise in exploitation. I found the back story to be quite open-ended and left a lot of room for interpretation. What was really strange is that the movie had me feeling amped up at the beginning and soothed and calm by the end of it. Quite the reverse of what I expected. It left a lot of questions hanging too: was it just Bellucci's dream? Were the two guys justified for killing the man in the gay bar? Is revenge as senseless as the criminal act that motivates it? etc. Having been the victim of a car-jacking once, I do understand the motivation for revenge. One of the hardest questions in life is how do you get revenge without being sucked into the world of the criminals who push you into it, and ultimately, becoming one of them? What I also liked is that none of the characters is 'pure'. Marcus is obviously a womanizer and a bit of a loose'cannon, while Bellucci does have an air of the seductress/tease about her. Pierre is a wimp and a coward, but even he is pushed into deviant behaviour. I'd have to see the film again to sort out what it means because it's somewhat emotionally draining and hardly leaves you room to think...which may be the point of the director after all. All in all, a much better film than I expected it to be and certainly well above the works of other 'shock-meister' directors like Larry Clark. It's worth a viewing but it's not for the squeamish.

Rating:
Summary: Duckman
Review: I think that Growman's review is very helpful, and I would incorporate the majority of his comments as my own. However, I am not sure whether the director's intent may have been "cherish life, love each other more." Maybe so, but trying to figure out what the director intended is really a moot exercise and quite frankly irrlevant to the review of the film. What this film did for me, I felt, was showing how different violence can be perceived: violence in its raw form without explanation, and violence with a seed of vengence. By having the sequence of events played out in reverse, my initial reaction to the brutal death at the beginning of the film was "oh my God, why?!" Then, I watched the scene again after watching the whole film, and my reaction suddenly turned to "Yes, he deserves it." I wasn't proud of my second reaction, yet I think it does speak the truth to human nature. By the way, anyone noticed that the person who was killed at the club was not the right guy?? (the rapist had a tape over his nose, who incidentally was watching his friend getting beaten to death by Pierre). I am not sure whether Alex was indeed the one who suffered the most, considering that Pierre goes to jail for life having murdered someone in third-party self defense but against the wrong person . . .

Rating:
Summary: A Hyperbole of Metropolitan Horrors
Review: This art-house film manages to dredge up some of most ghastly taboo elements in society and renders them in livid upsets onto the screen. In Cannes, during its world premiere, critics called this the most controversial movie ever to be screened at the festival. There are good reasons for this. Firstly, it was obvious after the closing credits that this film would probably bypass the banning treatment in most countries. Secondly, the performances came from credible actors and actresses who obviously took the film very seriously and worked hard to make their characters functional. This makes it all more the terrible that the world will see France's Hollywood counterparts do the equivalent of participating in an adventure into the decrepit bowels of human waste.

The theme of Irreversible is a rape revenge movie. It contains the most shocking murder scene ever committed to celluloid and the most heinous sexual one too. This will unfairly lop this drama alongside the likes of "I Spit on your Grave" or "Last House on the Left". "Last House on the Left" is not as bad as "I Spit on your Grave" but is equally controversial for its rape sequence. "Last House" is shocking, but is passable because it has the moral elements of "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" to consider. "I Spit on your Grave" is exploitation that is designed to cater for the gore market and has no place in cinema. Most horror fans will also agree that "I spit on your Grave" is simply sick and should never be repeated again. Some may even consider it dangerous material. I certainly would agree with that last statement and I hoped that a film like that would never be made again. Then Gasper Noe came along in 2002 and appeared to have done just that. When the censors let this one pass and it achieved some acclaim from the critics it got my attention.

Irreversible is like neither of the two movies mention above. It is hard to compare Irreversible to anything other than that of very moving, shocking and brutal drama. The film is designed backwards, running from the end to the beginning. This helps the viewer to come down from the bad trip that first forty minutes bangs into them. The film is also edited in such a way that it moves uncut from one scene to the next. This is achieved by a very nauseating camera movement which goes up into the air and flips around in circles to join up with the next sequence. This stomach-churning effect will have you feeling ill within the first five minutes. As Noe takes us into the red lit nadir of a homosexual nightclub you are about to see things that you have never seen before... nor do you want too. When the freak murder scene involving a fire extinguisher comes out of the blue, you are witnessing what seems like a very real and violent homicide. The camera does not cut away as a person appears to have his face smashed in to the point where all that remains is the lower quivering jaw and his arms shaking around. The question then remains as to why this happened, who is the dead man and why did they kill him? As the film moves backwards, you hope that is all is going to be explained and in many ways it is.

The resolution or justification never really comes but you realize that what has happened, transpired because it simply did - without cause, without validation but not without meaning. Noe's world is as much of a fantasy as it is a reality. There is nothing here that is going to reconcile what you witnessed and the film is pretty bleak through and through. It has many morals about the intention and execution of vigilante retribution but also about the desperateness of a lovers' sheer blind rage. Many things happen in this film because the protagonists did not take a moment out to consider their actions or the consequences. In many ways this film speaks volumes about the quality of life and those who disrespect it. It describes a world where bad guys can win and good people become victims. Sounds familiar? That is because it is. There is no happy Hollywood ending here because we do not live in Hollywood. Noe smacks that home to us and maybe some us have a need to be told this. Certainly I came away from this movie with a changed mind in a lot of respects. I want to live my life for the better and certainly want to avoid becoming or ending up like most of the characters here. In many ways this is a good thing and the film genuinely makes you want to value life, friends and love a bit more. It is strange that the nature of this movie would have this kind of effect - but it does.

The moral here is that life is precious. You should think about yourself and others a bit more and try to do more good than harm. Sometimes our pride and greed can sideline these things. Certainly Noe is saying that we should remember who and what we are and try to make a world for the better. It is certainly a worldly endeavour to get people to understand this and Noe's last reel contains a final vestibule of assertion which drives this point home to the viewer. It is a wicked way to present this just cause, but then again sometimes it is needed. It is strange that this film would have this paradox but then again Noe is a great director and his understanding of how we work is second to none. This is cinema at its most powerful, dramatic and engaging. Do not avoid this because of its offensiveness. There is a good moral message here to be gained.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Good Film
Review: I thought that this was a very well made film that has a good message. This movie is not made for entertainment purposes, so if your looking for a movie to entertain you, look else were. I am sure that everyone knows what the story is and heard that the movie is violent. Except for the opening sequence and the rape, the movie is not violent, but those parts will turn a lot of people away. I must say that I have a strong stomach and can take watch some pretty violent things with out having to look away. But as I watched the openings part in irreversible I had to look away at times, it is pretty brutal. So i only recommend this movie to people that have a strong stomach and to people who are looking for a good movie.