Enter The Void (2009)

Directed by: Gaspar Noé

Written by: Gaspar Noé (with the help of Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

Players: Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy

Setup: Coincidentally reading a book about life and death from his French stoner friend, we see the past, present and future of an American drug dealer in Tokyo following his death (and an irrelevant drug trip).

Review: Having previously written about filmmaker Gaspar Noé’s second feature film Irreversible (appreciating the craft and technique, while giving caution regarding the disturbing visual and thematic material therein) I looked upon Enter The Void with overall excitement for the striking visuals and atmosphere the director would most likely present.  Our own Status Joe’s pseudo-recommendation motivated me to finally check it due to the fact I am currently working on an experimental short film with a first person point-of-view, which as you may excitedly/skeptically surmise is the modus operandi of this film.  Anyone who is skeptical in this regard can chill out; the effect only adds to the beautiful and languid visual language Noé developed for this film, while adhering to specific rules based on the story at hand.  Anyone who is excited should still be warned; this is by far one of the least accessible movies I’ve seen from the last decade, with hauntingly disturbing imagery and material making for a film I can’t stop thinking about, and yet can’t fully recommend 

After a truly jarring, shocking and awesome opening credits sequence full of colors and LFO’s “Freak,” we find ourselves behind the eyes of our visual surrogate Oscar as he looks out into the Toyko night from a high-rise apartment.  Once he’s done tripping on DMT, he meets his buddy Alex, they proceed to discuss The Tibetan Book of the Dead that Alex has loaned him, and watch as Oscar is killed in a police raid.  Without much information given to the audience except life and death musings and alterations in cinema style, we follow “Oscar” through languid camera movements as he encounters all the important people in his life, especially his sister (played by the beautiful yet slightly irritating Paz de la Huerta).  Besides seeing the immediate present following his death, we go into his past with the camera following directly behind his head, and then the future with more floating. 

In what overall amounts to a poetic fever dream, I cannot hold back my appreciation for the visual rules and cinematography Noé has laid out; they are arguably more important to the effective telling of this bizarre story than anything else, as well as show that based on the fantastic movement of camera and effects there is no doubt we are in the hands of a genius technician. 

While there is much to appreciate here, one can’t help but wonder at the lack of connection and importance to a number of scenes, along with unfortunately consciously pretentious moments.  Even certain scenes without any visual effects still amaze, though at times with a lack of vitality.  I can’t help but think Gaspar Noé pushes the dramatic limits for the sake of doing so, as seen in a not too graphic but obviously implied disturbing abortion scene, and a final scene where we actually see a digital penis during intercourse (its evoking the creation of life, but I honestly couldn’t help but laugh).   

While the credits are a work of wonder, they do not directly appear to connect to the film’s thematic material as a whole; in other words, you could not decipher what the movie is about based on credits alone.  This is also true for the opening DMT “trip” Oscar has; while relaxingly hypnotic, and possibly related to the fact that he is a drug dealer along with a foreshadowing of his transition to the afterlife, it does not seem to have a connection to his post-mortem adventure.

However, even when the film is losing connectedness plot wise, the striking visuals can be argued to have a thematic relation to one another whether it be the surreal, false perceptions of reality, or just wannabe Freud-weirdness (having seriously bizarre and incestuous thoughts about his mother and sister, Oscar should have seen a psychiatrist before his death).  Overall, when you avoid these critiques, you come away with a truly unsettling look at life and death, past and future, all presented as a cyclical process (think the antithesis of The Tree of Life, or an exceptionally gritty It’s A Wonderful Life).  For complete transparency, my jaw was dropped when the movie finished (few films have done this too me) and I’ve been thinking about this film more than 5 days after I watched it.  While pretentious at times, Enter The Void is a truly vivid and unique trip with verisimilitude behind every shot and a trance for the audience around every corner. 

Note: Based on your openness to this style of filmmaking, or the very disturbing and depressing material that’s associated with the rest of the director’s oeuvre, it may (probably) would be one you want to skip.

 

Tidbit: Gaspar Noé was inspired by a few other films, most notably 2001: A Space Odyssey during Bowman’s Star gate sequence.  Based on the lush quality of his sequences and his appreciation for similar scenes presented previously, its obvious he appreciates the ITunes visualizer. 

Drink of Choice:  As jarring as the film can be, one must be calm and relaxed to let it completely wash over you.  For this, I recommends VSOP Brandy, served neat.