MARCH 14, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 6

Media has gone from scratches on a cave wall to realistic paintings and sculptures to stylized, surreal, abstract forms to photos and on and on. What they all have in common is that they are not what they appear to be but rather a material or chemical reaction in and of itself. Just paint, just hunks of stone, just ink. The people responsible for visual works create a form out of some earthly material, and our eyes and brains do the rest.

Apply this idea to Irreversible and it's easier to sit through. I've known some sadists who claim to enjoy viewing Gaspar Noe's contribution to nauseating the world, which I find a little strange, because I think of continued viewings of Irreversible to be a seriously masochistic endeavor.

The plot makes this film, arguably, a pulp movie. A simple revenge story, common among pulps, with very little scripted dialogue and multiple opportunities for graphic violence.

It's not like Irreversible is a step in a new direction for Noe. His previous work of shorts and feature I Stand Alone include rape, assault to the gut of a pregnant woman, hatred, on-screen warnings, gory violence, and more.

But it's not just disturbing images Noe is interested in. He's out to use the medium of film to jack with biological processes. Gruesome sounds, painfully brisk editing, wild camera movement, dramatic tension—all these things lend to specific reactions in people, and Noe uses them to set off an audience's senses. In the art gallery world, Noe's the guy who displayed a toilet to remind us all that "art" is really just stuff people experience, visually or otherwise, and that it doesn't have to be pretty or deep or meaningful and, truthfully, we can shit in it if we wish.

And in Irreversible, audiences pretty much did. The movie box in the French video release boasts that approximately two hundred people walked out during the film's premiere at Cannes. My own personal audience experience with this film was in an Aesthetics class where our professor showed us the infamous rape scene. Afterward, someone near me croaked, "why did you do that to us?"

But I get it, or, at least, I think I do. Movies don't have to pretty to be hailed as achievements. Gaspar Noe fooled with the method of creating a movie to affect us at a gut level. He crafted disturbing art. So let's look at how he did it.

First, as a sign that the film is shown in reverse chronological order, the end credits start things off, scrolling by backward. And, as a sign that we're in for some stomach-wrenching camerawork, the backward names and job titles turn at angles, swirl around, and become almost impossible to read, even for backwards-script-savvy people. To open the story of the piece, The Butcher from I Stand Alone references his punishment for having sex with his daughter, as if Noe were trying to say, "I'm picking up from the most disturbing part of my last movie." The camera is already flying around like a hapless moth who can't decide which light to orbit. It's an immediate headache for those people who need to look out the window to avoid getting carsick. For wild-flight shots like this, Noe used one of the smallest 16mm cameras available.

Since he used Super 16 and had a seriously rapid shooting schedule, Noe had to pull off a number of and tricks in post. He had his footage telecined and touched-up and added to ad naseum. Visual effects artists added odd touches, like the genitalia of a rapist, the blood spatter of a victim, the crushed head of a man who had an unfortunate destiny with a fire extinguisher, and so on. Post audio added such bits as a low-frequency noise that's known to create nausea in most human beings. While, technically, you could argue Noe put so much in the post-production of the movie to clean it up, he realistically was working hard to dirty it so much that lose your appetite.

Also, if all the camera work and gory details and vomit-inducting sounds didn't disturb an audience member then, at least the grotesque actions shown without relent do the trick (hopefully, right?). Anyone squeamish about S&M-like sex can't be thrilled about the opening sequence, which bounces from room to room in a gay sex club. Anyone who feels a little ill when they see cocaine-sniffing junkies will close their eyes for the opening of the party scene. Anyone not fond of sexual perversion basically won't be happy with the she-males and the anal rape and the... actually, this list could get long.

Then, of course, there are the two scenes that make this movie famous. The first starts with Marcus, bent on revenge, going after the man he thinks raped his girlfriend. Marcus' revenge, at least personally, is short-lived, as he's pinned to the floor and his right arm is snapped, bent in a completely impossible direction and cracked like a twig. His attacker has it worse, slammed away by Marcus' friend, Pierre, who's armed with a fire extinguisher. Then, without any editing to give viewers a break from the violence, the man's head is bashed in while the camera continues to swirl around. A good test to see how sickly curious someone is, I think, is to see if their eyes follow the demolishing skull, scanning for details as the gore flies all over the screen. The details, by the way, include twitching fingers, missing teeth, and, even at the end, a moving jaw, leaving to wonder, how much did the guy survive before finally dying? All the while, Noe cameos as a masturbating man, apparently turned on by the violence.

Later (or sooner, however you choose to dissect it), Marcus' girlfriend, Alex, meets with her appetite-suppressing fate. First, the end result is shown, as Alex gets wheeled into an ambulance with a lesser-bashed-in face. The rape scene that follows never fails to lessen my mood. Alex goes into an underpass, the nightlife buzzing just above, and passes a man attempting to beat a woman. The woman escapes, but Alex is trapped and a knife is pulled on her. Her attacker pins her down, tears her clothes, and sodomizes her, and all the while he frequently reminds anyone who either was wondering or didn't want to know that Alex bleeds while she's raped. Her screaming into the man's clenched hand goes on for several minutes. During the scene, a man comes down the stairs, sees the rape, and runs away. When the rape is over, Alex tries to crawl away, moaning in pain, but it's not over. Her assailant kicks her aside and bashes her face into the concrete repeatedly.

It's not just that viewers are subjected to violence, it's that they're treated like lab rats and spectators. The sex club violence has the low-frequency tone and the camerawork that at least reminds some that it's just a movie. The rape, however, lets the camera lie still for a painful portion, making everyone a helpless viewer. No special effects needed, really, but Noe had aforementioned touches added to make things worse.

So, wait, why did someone make this? A number of people could and probably have waved the back of their hands at Irreversible and said, "No, this is pointless violence and it's sick." For someone in that position of the moral compass, this movie is a like that Virgin Mary rendered in that same shit.

But it's not just about violence and gore. Irreversible follows up all the graphic violence with a warm and pretty scene, one that even contains silly humor. Marcus and Alex lie naked in bed in an embrace. Alex, pre-rape, has an amazing body, amazing skin, and the couple are obviously infatuated with each other. They roll around, they laugh, Alex knees Marcus in the balls and the two crack up. All the while, the background holds either silence or soothing music and the camerawork is smooth. This intimate look of a lovey-dovey couple sets up what audiences have already seen: Marcus' rage, Alex's mutilated body, depressed characters, jolted images, unforgiving depictions of violence, all that painful crap, and, last but not least, it lends the information that Alex is pregnant. It's like someone told you a story and ended with, "To top it all off, she was bearing a child!"

Finally, at the end, Noe swirls the camera through a beautiful, blue-sky day, complete with lush grass, bright colors, happy children, the works. Is this some sort of beauty versus ugly reminder? When Noe made I Stand Alone, he talked about how it was anti-Paris, sort of anti-beauty. But maybe I'm getting deeper than Noe intended, because, to end the film is a flashing white screen, like the fluttering shutter of a projector. The end is a simple reminder that it's a movie; that it's a bunch of stuff processed into film and enlarged for all to see.

I don't enjoy viewing Irreversible, but I've seen it a small handful of times. It makes me think about movies the same way processing film made me think about snapping photos. Once you take something apart and find out how it works, why it exists, you can see it for what it really is. Gaspar Noe must have had some similar sentiment at some point, because he's making a career out of reminding us that this medium, that has the ability to show us romance and exotic scenery and companionship, can just as easily be made to show us hate and anger and all the little details of rape we'd probably rather not know. For that reason, I say his work is extremely significant. For his technical and creative prowess at getting the job done and making a finished product, I say his work is extremely impressive. Should Noe decide to make an altogether gorgeous movie some day, it'll probably be one of the prettiest movies ever.

But, for now, we've got this reminder that art doesn't have to be pretty to be effective.