Going into this movie for the first time, I was beyond exited to see it. The description had me hooked, and after watching his early film IRREVERSIBLE, I was eager to see more of Noe’s incredible directing. So as optimistic as I could be, I turned on the movie and 26 minutes later got bored and turned it off. That being said I have always felt bad for not giving this movie a fair shake, and even that first 20 minutes is something I found myself thinking of often. So lets finally give Noe his spot in the sun and give ENTER THE VOID a proper review.
Enter the Void is a 2009 experimental art film written and directed by Gaspar Noé and starring Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, and Cyril Roy. Oscar and his sister Linda are recent arrivals in Tokyo. Oscar's a small time drug dealer, and Linda works as a nightclub stripper. One night, Oscar is caught up in a police bust and shot. As he lies dying, his spirit, faithful to the promise he made his sister - that he would never abandon her - refuses to abandon the world of the living. It wanders through the city, his visions growing evermore distorted, evermore nightmarish. Past, present and future merge in a hallucinatory maelstrom.
The idea for the film had been growing since Noé's adolescence, when he first became interested in matters of death and existence. In his early twenties—while under influence of psilocybin mushrooms—he saw Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake, a 1947 film shot entirely in a first-person perspective. He then decided that, if he ever made a film about the afterlife, that was the way in which it would be filmed. Noé had been working on different versions of the screenplay for fifteen years before the film went into production. The story had initially been more linear, and the drafts were set in different locations, including the Andes, France, and New York City. Tokyo was chosen because it could provide colourful environments required for the film's hallucinogenic aspects, and because Japan's repressive drug laws add to the drama, explaining the intensity of the main character's fear of the police
The thing about this movie is that it often exasperating and a little meandering, but is always visionary. The first twenty minutes or so follows Oscar as he takes a hit of DMT and goes on a visually arresting, if overly-long trip. The pacing isn’t helped by the fact most of the dialogue was improvised by the cast. Gaspar Noé stated that, as he didn't understand English very much, he needed someone to tell him if what the cast was saying sounded good or not. This opening pre-death segment really shouldn’t take up more than 10 minutes of screen time, but hey with an over 2 and a half hour run time you have plenty of time to watch a trippy desktop screensaver for a bit. Not that you would want to but hey…
Luckily once our main man Oscar bites the bullet, this movie quickly becomes what a lot of Now fans call his magnum opus. Noe proved with Irreversible that he was a technical genius and that his eye for original visuals knows no bounds. He also proved that he wasn't afraid to shock his audience and has quite the nasty streak running through his stories, and this movie feels like he is doubling down on both fronts. The darkness feels a lot more intense once we get a good long look at the life Oscar lead, and all of the trauma that haunted him until the day he died. Its actually kind of humorous how little I gave a shit about Oscar while he was alive, but once he dies he becomes equally sympathetic and simply pathetic at the same time.
Gaspar Noé describes this movie as a "Psychedelic Melodrama", and that by far the best way to explain this movie. It isn’t really asking you to make any kind of moral judgement on Oscar, it simply shows you the way he lived his life through the best and worst of times. Sometimes its pleasant childhood family memories, sometimes it watching yourself slowly poison the ones you love by getting them addicted to liquid death. Its tub time with Mom, followed by a horrific car crash that kills both parents and sets the tone for the rest of your life.
This is a film filled with thousands of correct interpretations, to the point where even The title has many different meanings. To Enter the Void is to Enter the Death, to follow the death of a person as we do on this spiritual journey of the afterlife. Terms that are used when someone dies is Blank Void or Black Void, they have this blank emptiness in their eyes now, their soul is gone from their body, which is what this crazy-brilliant movie is all about. You follow where the soul goes, literally, in more ways than one.
I often find myself in way over my head when it comes to some of the more artistic films, but this one is easily the craziest and most complicated film I have ever attempted to unpack. Maybe a few years down the road after a few more viewings I might have something more polished to say.
For know, I’m sort of just left sitting here in awe of what Noe created.
100/10
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