We have been woefully remiss in filing my SXSW reports, but this is in part due to the psychic trauma inflicted by Gaspar Noe’s extraordinary “Enter The Void,” his nearly three hour phantasmagoric assault on the senses and the psyche (and hell, a new trailer just hit so why not discuss it again?). We’re still recovering from it. To get a small sense of the experience, turn your lights off, turn the volume up, and watch the film’s seizure-inducing opening title sequence in full-screen 720p on your computer. (Seriously. Do this right now. It’ll only take a minute.)
Still reading? Good. Then hopefully you haven’t suffered a catastrophic cerebral hemorrhage. And you’ve just seen one of the boldest (greatest?) works of title design in cinematic history.
Noé (who, for whatever it’s worth, quite disturbingly looks like my evil twin, vaguely) is already well established as one of modern cinema’s most uncompromising, provocative, challenging and disturbing filmmakers, and “Enter The Void” will only add to this reputation, even while it stands apart as something entirely new. It is a bold masterstroke of visionary creative expression and stunning technical achievement, yet I will probably be thankful if I never see it again. I can’t even begin to say I enjoyed it, but I hugely admire it for its artistry and audacity. It’s a remarkable, revelatory film, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, and I’m equally fascinated by how he made it as I am by why.
After the opening credits, the first thing you notice is that the film is a work of first-person cinema. Entirely. That is, the whole movie from beginning to end shows us the main character’s subjective POV. I’m only aware of one other film that’s ever dared attempt this (Robert Montgomery’s 1947 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s “Lady In The Lake”), but Noé goes so far as to have the camera (and hence entire screen) “blink” when the main character does (At least while he’s still alive). To say this is disconcerting is putting it mildly.
The audience, effectively, inhabits the main character, Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a small-time American drug dealer in contemporary Tokyo who’s been advised to read The Tibetan Book of the Dead (as the audience should be before watching the film). But just when you think you can’t stand the blinking any more, he suffers (or rather we suffer) a catastrophic event, and we leave his body with him. It’s a remarkable moment, executed with technical and artistic ferocity, and from this point onward the film takes even bolder turns, as we the audience become Oscar’s disembodied spirit, traveling through Tokyo and his own memories on a searing, soul-shattering journey. (“Dark”, “disturbing” and “graphic” are profound understatements in describing what transpires before our eyes.)
Noé also periodically employs a full-screen strobing effect (similar to what we saw in the opening credits, as well as his “We Fuck Alone” segment of “Destricted“), but primarily as a transition device. A startling, painful, seizure-inducing transition device, which pays off magnificently (and bizarrely) by the end. It is as if Noé is pushing audiences as far as he can, and daring them to keep watching, or leave the theater. (In the midnight screening we attended, we didn’t notice anyone walk out, but it was a pretty hard-core SXSW crowd who’d toughed it out in the line.) He is also pushing the very boundaries of the medium itself, assaulting the boundaries of what cinema can do, and even is.
This is a movie that most people will probably hate, and we can’t in any way blame them. But then again it’s not really a movie. It’s sort of a virtual reality ride — a graphic, cinematic hallucinogen. An R-rated avatar experience. Those expecting a movie may find themselves alternately tortured and bored by it. But if you can give yourself over to the film, it’s absolutely mesmerizing trip that will burn itself into your psyche unlike anything else. (And I will probably buy it when it comes out on Blu-Ray.) — Paul Alvarado-Dykstra (aka RoboGeek)