Enter the Void (2009)
Gaspar Noé’s “Enter the Void (2009)” is the psychological story of a soul, observing the repercussions of his death, seeks resurrection. Here’s how I see it.
Enter the Void (2009 movie) is one hell of a picture in motion. It is loud, garish, ugly and staggeringly empty. If your idea of visionary filmmaking is someone flashing brightly colored lights at you, then count yourself in for a treat; you are about to experience some visionary filmmaking. The rest of us will get a repetitive shuffling of unpleasant individuals doing unpleasant things, intercut with lots of neon and occasionally a towering penis shoved in our faces (Thank God it wasn’t shot in 3D). I don’t care how amazing of a technical experience this is. Not only does the emperor have no clothes. He’s teabagging your wife.
Worth watching? Just that one time for a lot of you, probably (if not surely). It’s not the greatest film ever made, possibly one of the most memorable cinema experiences in terms of effects, it’s overlong, uncomfortable, and excessive, but of course, it’s worth viewing as there aren’t many movies like it.
I’m not epileptic, but I do suffer (even though I hate using that word in this context) from hypnagogia (sleep paralysis.) If my understanding is correct, this movie is centered (loosely) around DXM, which triggers lucid dreams. I feel like, because of that, I would be able to relate to what I’m seeing, and I find the concept of the movie fascinating. Still going to watch it tonight. We’ll see how it goes. I know it’s not a horror movie, and I’m not worried about being “scared,” per se, I just know it’s incredibly real and explicit, and don’t want it to keep me awake at night because I can’t get the images out of my head.
“Enter the Void” — is utterly an original film by Noé. There is no in between with this movie, it seems. Either you get sucked into the nightmarish aesthetics and sweeping camerawork and go along for the ride, or one is completely left in the cold, in which case it understandably becomes and unendurable experience in tedium.
Let me just say this (I don’t really want this post to be a review): “Enter The Void” is one of the rare films that I’ve seen where you feel completely shifted after watching. It pokes and prods at something within you. It seriously makes you feel. It is undoubtedly an experience, as Noe has described it (“a psychedelic experience without drugs”). I felt similarly after watching Irréversible, but unfortunately the experience was kind of tainted since I’ve heard so much about it already (the rape scene; the extinguisher scene) and I watched it at a friend’s house with my buddies. Needless to say, I really enjoyed it as well. Perhaps I’m rambling. The point of this post is to find out what others think about Noe and his films. Is he too hyped? Worthy of hype? Genius? Crazy? It’s hard to draw the line with his films because they’re immediately shocking and bizarre but there really is depth to them, just like the great directors of the past and present (Kubrick, Lynch, etc.).
The Movie: This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past — where he sees his parents before their deaths — to the present — where he witnesses his own autopsy — and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
What’s weird: This film is as messed up as it can get, for numerous reasons. Most notably the director’s style in this movie and the way he can deeply immerse the audience into his movies and take us on a batsh*t crazy psychedelic journey makes Enter the Void the weirdest movie of the millennium.
Weirdest moment: Oscar watches a sex scene from the inside of a woman’s birth canal.
By the way: During the first sequence in the “Sex, Money, Power” strip club, the camera and jib/crane are visible in the reflection of the platform the dancers are on.
The Storyline divulges into a series of flashes to a roll of flashbacks — all fabricating from a deadman sited in a Tokyo Bathroom. All the while lingering on the deeply creepy semi incestuous bond he has with his sister. This I was more or less prepared for, as I was prepared and excited for Noe’s ambitious idea of portraying death in the first person and his reputation as an assaultive provocateur. All fine qualities in and of themselves. What I was unprepared for is just how punishingly repetitive and unimaginative Noe’s imagery would be. The movie runs two hours and forty minutes and you will feel every blessed one of them. Over that long course you’ll get to see each of Noe’s dull imagery several times over. I understand that Noe is attempting to portray the mind in shutdown mode, running over the same repetitive sights, sounds and concepts. If this was the case could he at least choose more interesting and original sights sounds and concepts then Bright flashing lights, neon, and car crashes?
Oh I forgot there is extensive imagery of an aborted fetus. Which I’m beginning to think might supplant prayer as the last refuge of a scoundrel. Look can we all agree, that images of aborted fetus should strictly be the province of bad heavy metal bands, radical pro lifers, performance artists, and other sad people desperately seeking attention? (Which come to think of it, fits as a description of Noe so gee I guess carry on.)
So yeah, my Irish is up a little more than it usually is on this Hubpages site. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s wasted potential. The opportunity for pure artistic expression comes along so seldom that it’s a shame to watch it squandered. I can only imagine what someone like Herzog or Jodorowsky would have done with this concept and budget.
The ‘Opening’ End Credits
Gaspar always begins his films with the end credits — he intends to create a gateway to his story with the titling sequence at the start. In his other film Irreversible with Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, the whole story was a flash-back. The film starts with the end credits to tell the story using an incredible flash-back structure.
Like sighs from a scythe in a wheat field of psychosis, the opening title sequence for Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void is a melting onslaught of typographic design foisted upon the senses. This unrelenting visual overdose hacks pleasurably at the viewer, as the tip of a nail does finding its destiny. Names become bright little deaths fired to a machine gun beat; the images encircle your pupils as LFO’s “Freak” drives the nail deeper.
And simply due to their experimental and potentially offensive themes, Noé’s films seem to generally keep out of the mainstream — but “Enter the Void” is perhaps his most accessible and maybe even his most pleasant, so make sure you don’t pass over this one. It’s available for streaming on Netflix so there’s really no excuse to not see it.
Watch The Trailer:
Facts & Trivia
- Gaspar Noé planned Enter the Void (2009) over a period of 15 years — before his short film Carne (1991). He was around 23 years old, when he saw Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake (1947) on drugs. The film is shot in subjective camera, entirely from the point of view of the main character. For Enter the Void, Noé uses a subjective camera in the same manner. The main character Oscar is seen just once while the character is alive (in a mirror.)
- The ambient score of the film was assembled from existing music and sound sources collected by Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk, whom Noé really wanted to compose the film’s score but couldn’t because Disney already tapped Daft Punk for the soundtrack of TRON: Legacy (2010)’ at the time.
- The exact running time at the BFI London Film Festival was 161 minutes. When the film was theatrically released in France on 5th of May 2010, the running time was approximately 154 minutes (official press book). It’s clear that Gaspar Noé made some further minor changes: for example the opening credits at BFI London Film Festival were slightly different in its typography and the music from “LFO-Freak” wasn’t used there either.
- During the Cannes Film Festival 2008, the distributor Wild Bunch presented the first teaser-trailers of “Enter The Void”, one year before the film was shown in competition 2009 at this Festival. The press book contains, beside the usual synopsis a note of Gaspar Noé. This director’s note begins with a quote from Steven Spielberg: “Making a film is difficult, but making a great film is an almost impossible task.”
- Gaspar Noé describes his movie as a “Psychedelic Melodrama”.
These facts above, also appears on the film’s IMDb page.
Written by Asif Ahsan Khan; Originally published at hubpages.com.
