Criticature: "Enter the Void" (2009)

Described by its creator as a “psychedelic melodrama”, the mammoth festival cut of Gaspar Noé's “Enter the Void” is at once a profound meditation on the human perception of death as well as an utterly unwatchable piece of indulgent Eurotrash nonsense. Combined, the two experiences make for a flawed masterpiece.

For anyone who has cared to check out the one or two previous films to the director’s credit you are aware that he does not shy away from the disturbing or the ugly. But if you’re aware of that then you’re probably aware of how memorable his camerawork is too.

‘Dizzying’ would be putting in lightly.

Not that it captures what the movie is about at all, “Void” loosely centers on the experiences of two American siblings—Oscar and Linda—living out their lives amid the Tokyo club scene, one by selling hallucinogens and the other by selling her body. But when Oscar is shot during a botched drug deal, that’s when things take a turn for the weird.

It’s the same kind of point-blank stream-of-consciousness that we first saw in “Irreversible” that makes watching this more of an experiment than a movie.  

For instance, we begin with a 20-minute tracking shot from the perspective of Oscar as he drops DMT  and hashes out snippets of the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” with a friend. By using a mash of studio footage, helicopter shots, steadicams, mirrors and strobes, all of it augmented by CGI, the end result is a sometimes harrowing journey through Oscar’s eyes as he subsequently floats to ‘purgatory’ (that’s just the best way to describe it) where he subsequently watches down over his sister as she grapples with the aftermath of his death.

Meanwhile, we’re haunted by visions of his past—such as the disturbing death of his parents, memories of sexual encounters and his ultimate 'rebirth'.

Noé has explicitly stated that his intention, though, is not to illuminate the cycle of life. Rather, he chooses to give us the last fleeting glimpses of an adolescent who dies with very shallow understanding of a Buddhist scripture, of which his synapses fire in a feeble attempt to construct meaning around his own death.

It’s hard to understand what Noé hopes to accomplish by doing this. By revealing the human experience as a kind of fraud. A simple trick of the mind. He’s openly stated that he is against all religions. But the pitch-black nihilism of his intended vision seems far more personal and vindictive than universal. It makes for a very cynical interpretation of life and the beauty it purportedly idolizes.

Even so.  The technical prowess of the extended shots covering the Shinjuku nightscape, lit up in flares of neon fuchsia and orange, give the film an unintentional transcendent quality that even Noe could not destroy. And the shifts between the hellish and the heavenly are masterful, almost seamless in their balance.

In this way, “Void” actually breaks beyond the vision of its author and forges a new, possibly better experience than the one he intended.

Reincarnation may just be a state of mind. It may all be relative. Qualitative. But if that’s the case then what you choose to take away from this movie is subject to the one thing that the director cannot control with all of his illusions and politics—perception. 

Trippy, no? 

***

Directed by:

Gaspar Noé

Written by: 
Gaspar Noé & Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Produced by:
 Philippe Bober.........................associate producer
Pierre Buffin
Brahim Chioua
Valerio De Paolis.....................associate producer
Olivier Delbosc
Suzanne Girard.........................line producer
Peter Hermann
Nicolas Leclercq......................associate producer
Vincent Maraval
Susanne Marian
Marc Missonnier
Gaspar Noé............................associate producer
Georgina Pope........................line producer
Olivier Théry-Lapiney..............line producer

Cast:
Paz de la Huerta......................Linda
Nathaniel Brown.................... Oscar
Cyril Roy...............................Alex
Olly Alexander.......................Victor
Masato Tanno........................Mario
Ed Spear...............................Bruno
 Emily Alyn Lind....................Little Linda
Jesse Kuhn............................Little Oscar
Nobu Imai.............................Tito
Sakiko Fukuhara...................Saki
Janice Sicotte-Béliveau..........Mother
Sarah Stockbridge................Suzy
Stuart Miller.........................Victor's Father
Yemi....................................Carol
Rumiko Kimishima................Rumi