MUBI

This is the only movie I’ve ever rated 5 stars. The reason is quite self-centered: it’s the movie I wish I had came up with. It’s choking and controversial, just my type of story. There’s no middle term, you either like or not, and if you do it is because you enjoy to be disturbed. I look for that constantly in cinema. Something that makes me think, something that defies me and the idea I hold of things. Therefore, this piece is unavoidable for me. It’s human, uncensored, raw. Since the sounds that make you sick to the camera work, and the system of telling a story backwards works wonderfully. You end up knowing the characters all the same and you feel sympathetic for them all the same or even more, because you know what awaits them. In the end is undoubtedly far more interesting than watching a linear story.

It’s Noé’s life movie – at least it is the most commented. And at the end it doesn’t matter if people talk good or bad about it, as long as they talk about it. Got to like him and the way he works. I felt on a dream during the all thing. I appreciate his methods as much as his themes. He is very loose about the opinions regarding his work, which is the secret to it: you can’t make something hopping that everyone will enjoy it, you’ll be conditioning the piece and end up satisfying no one.

The rape scene is heartbreaking and the actors commitment is laudable. Bellucci proves she isn’t just a pretty face and stands up to the intensity of the scene that lasted nine minutes without cuts. The man standing at the end of the tunnel for a moment during the rape, leaving few second later is also very well placed – another kick in the stomach for the audience. At this point people usually accuse me of being insensitive towards what’s happening, but the truth is that crimes against women, and rape in particular touch me deeply. I’m not excusing myself however of being a sadistic person. Is just that people who, like me, tend to rationalize a lot about something, often do it through confrontation.

This type of approach of a story has also the vantage of the fake happy ending. It ends in a peaceful place although you know it’s an illusion. Whatever is to happen will happen, no matter the signs you get previously. Ain’t that compelling enough?

‘Arrete! Arrete! Arrete!’ Monica Bellucci shouts throughout the movie, and not only during ‘that’ scene. Mais, il n’arrete, jamais. The film just keeps going, showing us what we want to see, but at the same time, sort of don’t want to see. It was always going to be difficult to make a movie like this interesting, after throwing away its piece de resistance so liberally in the first half. But it does just about remain interesting. The final sequence feels like a bizarre quasi-eulogy for its own demise. Of course, everything’s meaning in the movie is turned on its head, and means something different depending on which direction you are considering the movie to be going. For example, Bellucci’s remark about premonitory dreams being a glimpse to what is to come has to us a sinister overtone, due to what we have already witnessed. But to the characters she
shares it with, it has almost no meaning at all.

It occurs to me that ‘exploitation’ cinema works on two levels. The form and the theme. In terms of the latter, a character (usually a female) is exploited before the viewer’s eyes. In terms of the former, the word ‘exploitation’ refers to the way in which a terrible act of violence is set up to give the characters an excuse to deliver a violent denouement – such as an act of revenge. It’s a tedious formula rarely done well any more, and so Irreversible quite literally turns it on its head. Maybe this makes it the ‘anti-exploitation’. Sure, thematically we still have our exploitation set-piece, but formally it is not quite so familiar. From the viewer’s perspective, the characters on-screen no longer have any motivation to exploit the situation and spill some blood, but instead backtrack sequentially into their ordinary origins.

Irreversible is not a Film for the weak of mind, for the weak of heart, and especially not for the weak of stomach. It’s not a Film for the impatient, or the anxious, and it’s frankly not a Film fit for any personality type, but, somehow, its violence and corruption is somehow mesmerizing. It got off to an intense and seemingly bland start, but soon developed into a nauseating maze of a movie, resembling the style of Johnathan Nolan’s Memento. The backward scenes definitely play tricks with the viewers’ emotions; some things are revealed that change the tone of the movie completely and then something else is shown and things are all shaken up, no doubt, for the worse. Irreversible is a hectic and stressful Film that has a dark twisted sense of humor, and a creatively bizarre Plot line, but the genius is all in the execution- which is brilliant. Excuse the pun, but the effects of this Film are absolutely irreversible, so view with caution.

There are many angles from which one could review this film, and I’m really not approaching it from any of them, as this isn’t a “review.”

Perhaps some could write off this film based on a simple belief that such violent images do not justify fictionalizing or photographing. In all honesty, I don’t dismiss this possibility, but I watched it, and it certainly effected me.

Formally, the abrasive (and at times bordering on gimicky) camera movements that act as a device for segmenting the film seem a bit overboard. Similarly, the “backwards” chronology gets somewhat tedious, though it does cause you to view certain events in an informed, or at least different, light.

The intention—and ultimate effect—are simple and efficient: by shaking the camera and disorienting the viewer, the long takes are all the more enthralling. The open-yet-serious treatment of sex (especially in the dialogue on the subway) remind me of other films released around the same time, such as Y tu Mama Tambien, which also includes long takes.

Long takes in some of my favorite contemporary films, such as You, the Living and Songs from the Second Floor, are meant to drown you in an epic, large scale symbolism, which unfolds slowly. The long takes in Irreversible are intimate, or more accurately, violating. (The infamous rape scene needs no description.) It’s a distinct use of long takes and quite unlike other films I’ve seen, and if anyone can direct me to comparable uses of the device (not the subject matter…), I’d be thankful.

If nothing else, this film is powerful, and the acting is outstanding. Cassel hasn’t let me down yet. And while this doesn’t qualify as a “review” in any sense of the term, it serves as a testament for the thought-provoking nature of the movie. It’s not every day that I watch a film and feel motivated to ramble on about it.

I love the way this film makes you jump back to previous (later, chronologically) parts of the movie, making one constantly reevaluate events that occurred under a new light which eventually becomes available. But, first off, the rape scene. That was brutal. How the fuck did Gaspar Noé film that?? I mean the ending where he bashes her head into the ground and it flies up with skin flaking off the forehead, was that digitally inserted later, right?? Had to be. How can make-up artists apply a job in 0.5 second? Still, these matter aside, this is a great film for human beings to watch, and, in the case of that section specifically, endure.

Marcus’s initial fury and destruction seems implacable surely, but what is more important, it is impossible to place and fathom. One cannot understand why this man is hellbent and virulently full of rage. Later of course, enter left: the context. The debasing of Alex, Marcus’s current girlfriend, is done with the utmost sinister care and stubborn resolution that it becomes so incomparably reprehensible, so difficult to physically look at, that Marcus’s previous thrash through the grimy halls of The Rectum seems wholly justifiable. I cannot speak for other viewers obviously, but I was so pissed off that after the horror of the scene had ended, right around when Marcus and Pierre were messing around in the upstairs bathroom, that I actually wished that the beginning of the film were reinserted into the film’s structure as an explosive exercise in psychological release. I needed to see Marcus beat the living shit out of everyone in his path, be it morally right, or be it abhorrent anew. I felt Marcus’s boiling anger. As proof, what had originally felt as needlessly gratuitous to me when Pierre relentlessly bashed the skull of ‘Le Tenia’ in, I now felt great about. The original scathing image of the crumbled in skin and brain matter of the man only now served to soothe my shouting nerves.

But then, Irreversible did not end it just there. The second half of the film only makes one remember the rape scene that much more acutely. The contrast, sheer contrast of these parts is astounding and something I’ve never experienced before in cinema.

But yet again, there do seem to be subtexts to the tale. Marcus, high off of cocaine and dizzy with silliness, did, indirectly, set into motion the events which led to his girlfriend’s rape. And of course, the subject of sexuality is prevalent throughout. I noticed the men were in power always. The two women in the party house were nothing more than eager vesicles ready to take in the maximum amount of dick. The girlfriend Alex was overrun by Pierre who persisted constantly to discover whether or not Marcus was able to make her orgasm. She wanted to politely, discreetly leave her personal life a mystery, a right that should be granted, but Pierre was not willing to abide her and became her dominator. Even in the confines of the intimate bedroom with just Marcus and Alex alone, Marcus often pushed her bits here and bits there clearly past her comfort zone by trapping her physically under his body, or by needing to win the spitting stand-off. There was a prevailing sense of men dominating women, again repeated in the ladyboy who spoke only Spanish on the street being trapped and hurt, albeit that was during the period of Marcus’s epic wrath. As the only moment in the film where I felt women were honestly lifted up, exalted, was when Alex was dancing with the two other women she met at the party. Their shared glances and soft gazes was an oasis in the dominating world of man, perhaps suggesting male/female sexual relationships will always devolve into their most primal roles: that of the domineering and of the submissive.

And yet, and yet, the colorful, finally bright and sunny ending of the film was perhaps a requiem for what could have been. In the final scenes, Alex, not yet knowing of her future pregnancy, feels her tummy with much hope, the camera exiting ceremoniously out of the window and into the final shot: a camera the zooms out from a relaxed Alex, reading about time no doubt, into a resting position above that spins around a focal point of a sprinkler with young kids playing peacefully around. The exact antithesis to the hellishly real rape scene comes last, in an upbeat blue and green palette. Still, the unspeakable event cannot be forgotten, tainting even this simple scene of joy and innocence.

A film of bold strokes, both repulsive and renewing. Irreversible jumps the biggest emotion gap that I have ever experienced in a film, and does it successfully. Stylistically, the film gets top marks too.

From its violently tumbling beginning to its symphonic pirouetting at the end, this film is belabouring a point. Time destroys all things.

The change in love.
A decision in retrospect.
For our universe to exist in time as we understand it, it must become more random: nothing lasts forever, every thing is destroyed.

However, Alex proclaims that she isn’t a thing. Life exists outside the realm of things. Especially life that has the ability to create new life (for example a pregnant woman).

Alex is destroyed by humanity, by our evils somehow coalesced.

Alex claims that she makes all the decisions, and this is how it should be with respect to sex and the possible generation of life, the most wondrous “thing”, within her body. This is why rape is so abhorrent, the polar opposite of the most wondrous thing.

Spoiler warning*** It’s rather difficult to talk about Irreversible without giving things away.

There are many great examples of the ‘non-linear narrative’ style of film-making. In fact, two of the greatest films ever made are prime examples of this: The multiple flash-backs of ‘Citizen Kane’ and the different character viewpoints of the events of ‘Rashomon’. Film-makers as revered as Godard, Bergman, Fellini, Alain Resnais, Robert Altman and Nicolas Roeg have all made this style of film-making their own. A lot of directors working today, such as Stephen Soderberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, Wong Kar-wai, Gus Van Sant, Richard Linklater, Quentin Tarentino (most notably with Pulp Fiction) and of course David Lynch – who often tries the patience of his audience with his seemingly random jumble of plot strands. These film-makers know that it doesn’t have to be ‘beginning, middle and end’ and they exploit this idea to the hilt. Quite often with astonishing and rewarding results. It can enrich and deepen our perception of, what is sometimes quite a straight-forward story – making us examine it in a different, maybe more profound way. It also can make a film seem original and ground-breaking when in fact they are, quite often, at best, pastiching ideas from other film-makers and at worst simply stealing them (Tarentino anyone??). But I don’t think I had seen a film go (literally) backwards before I saw Memento. It starts with the end of the story, going backwards a scene at a time until we get to the beginning of the story. The reasoning was partly a plot devise and partly so we empathise more with the character’s problems with memory: It’s a jigsaw puzzle of a murder mystery that begins with a murder and we go back in time to discover the motivations and reasons behind the death. Along the way we discover he has the memory of a goldfish (almost!) – forgetting everything after a short period of time, making everything a renewed experience for our hero as it is for us, the audience. Unfortunately the film doesn’t stand up to more than a couple of viewings. Once we have the answers there’s not a lot to come back for. The same is true with ‘The Prestige’ and ‘The Usual Suspects’.
Now we have ‘Irreversible’. On a superficial level, it seems unoriginal – using the same device as Memento of a backwards moving narrative to discover the events leading up to a murder. But with rather different intentions and certainly more profound results. It worked for Christopher Nolan but it has more emotional depth and purpose here.

Irreversible is a gruelling and extremely troubling film that not only tests our patience and stomachs but our sense of morality and empathy too as it literally forces us to endure the hellish events of the characters on screen. Right from the start, we are plunged, unflinchingly, into the hellish events of it’s protagonists. Though calling it unflinching would be a massive understatement.

The film opens with a camera rolling and undulating through the air. We see a building, it’s windows and bricks coming and going into shot. Seemingly random and without reason. And then we move into a room within the building. In it are two men, one naked and one clothed, talking. The room is lighted with a harsh yellow light that makes the walls and, consequently the men, look kind of greasy and damp. Instead of light that cleanses, here it seems to be exposing something unclean and corrupt. The camera carries on moving in and out, rolling and undulating. Like someone drunk or high. It has a disconcerting affect and I’m still not sure of the reasoning behind it – are we being put off guard in some way maybe? Are we being reminded that we are watching? I already had in mind the opening sequence of Psycho. Except, in that film, we are less aware of the camera, as it smoothly tracks across the city skyline and straight through the window into the bedroom of the illicit lovers. But here, we are constantly reminded of the camera. Made less comfortable in our voyeurism if you like. This devise is carried on through to the next scene as the camera seems to move out the window and we observe the events going on outside. This is really where the story begins (ends?). From this point on, the film – and accordingly, the camera – becomes much more frenetic and disturbing. The scene prior, feels more of a prologue – almost soporific in feel (despite the subject of their discussion!) It gives us a clue as to how we’ll feel by the end of the film, as one character says “time destroys all things”. But before we can get to the end (beginning?) we have Hell to contend with!

A dizzying and very disturbing montage of shots and sounds – entwined bodies, grunts and groans, whip cracks, the flash of an erect penis, heads bobbing, men wanking etc – hurtles us headlong into the goings on in an S&M nightclub. The story has now begun to move backwards and we are plunged straight into what is, undoubtedly, the most realistically explicit (simulated) murder ever put on film. Totally unflinching – there’s no camera turning away here. It’s up to us to turn away. It’s our choice. I strongly suspect, this is where a lot of people began to leave the cinema. That’s their loss.
Ironically, as the story progresses (regresses?), we realise this scene requires us to pay more attention than we realise. Or feel comfortable with! Especially when we discover who the real villain is in this story!
From this scene on, the story carries on backwards. The frenetic camera going into overdrive – at one point seemingly see-sawing in and out of a closed car window for example. It’s disconcerting of course but totally necessary. A static camera would have had a relaxing effect that wouldn’t have felt right and I think we’d empathise less.

When we first see Monica Bellucci as Alex we only see her from behind. The camera stays with her all the time. Not cutting away. We HAVE to stay with her. The camera tells us we are not gonna leave her. We can’t (there is only a brief cutaway as the camera quickly looks to the subway sign and back at Monica) We follow her down to the subway and straight away we know it will happen here – in the subway. Just like the nightclub, the subway is blood red. Just as Pierre and Marcus descended into Hell when they entered the nightclub, so now has Alex in the subway.
I am still in two minds as to how necessary I feel it was for the rape to be so utterly unflinching and relentless. During the attack, for the first time in the film, the camera is static. It’s at Alex’s level throughout. Not just encouraging our empathy but forcing us to endure the assault with her. It’s the most draining and upsetting piece of cinema I have ever seen (excepting the real-life events depicted in the Russian film ‘Come and See’). But the violence that is inflicted on Alex AFTER the rape was a push too far for me. We have already gone through the rape with her – the tears and the knot in my stomach are testament to that – so the violent assault that followed, seemed, not just redundant but felt a bit like rubbing our faces in it. Up till we see Alex for the first time the camera hasn’t stopped moving – jumping about, undulating and swaying, seeming to move straight through car windows. But during the rape, as I said, the camera has been static – at Alex’s level. We empathise with her so completely we go through the assault with her. It’s a draining and deeply upsetting scene that tests our tolerance levels to the limit. (I can totally relate to those that walked out of the cinema at this point). Then the makers simply cross the line. Just when we think it is over the violence resumes, and at one point the POV changes from Alex to us, the audience. The camera swiftly and very obviously moves around the protagonists as if to ‘get a better look’ at her face as it is pummeled on the ground. It’s a deeply unpleasant moment that actually reminds us of what we are – an audience. We may think we are empathising but we are still watching. Just like the men who watch the murder in the nightclub, they do nothing and simply enjoy the spectacle. Unlike the stranger that wonders into the background and walks off doing nothing to help, we are worse – we stay and watch. I felt a bit of deja-vu here and was reminded of Haneke’s ‘Funny Games’. A film so totally devoid of humanity it disturbs me immensely that it has been given the Hollywood make-over.
But the film’s final half hour gives us what Haneke’s vile little film didn’t. Not only relief but humanity.
From this moment on the film becomes a cleansing experience. As time goes ever further backwards – before the murder, before the rape – we see the characters how they were – happy, normal, in love, looking forward to the future. The backwards narrative begins to have a healing effect. Cleansing if you like. For the characters but more so for us, the abused and battered audience! Those that left the cinema during the murder or the rape miss the relief these scenes give us. It would seem that they are left only with the horror.

The scenes that come after the rape (precede the story) become brighter and far less frenetic. I have to say the scene of the lovers, Marcus and Alex, naked and bathed in a warm orange glow, are some of the most beautiful and natural (and sexy!) I have seen in a film. It made me weep. Maybe part of it was because of it’s cleansing quality? It really feels like a couple happy and in love. Totally comfortable with each other.
The film culminates in the shots of Alex, alone, at turns looking radiant and at peace, holding her stomach – her unformed, unborn child. We can imagine that as the story has gone backwards that maybe the hellish events never happened. Or, in some way, we have been purged. After all, it’s only a film! And this IS the end really. Not the beginning. The closing shot of Alex, lying in a park, reading the book she mentioned earlier that she can’t finish (“the future is already written”) is almost Technicolor in look and how it makes us feel. The camera rolls away and over the lawn as children run in and out of shot, playing on the grass. The screen is filled with the a wonderful bright green from the grass. Green being the most calming and relaxing of colours (the reason it’s used so much in hospitals). The screen fades to white, completing the cleansing theme. It’s a truly beautiful moment. Can we relax? Not quite.
There is Beethoven on the soundtrack (a composer who alludes to ‘fate knocking at the door’ in his music) to remind us and the camera begins spinning wildly round and round as it did at the beginning of the film above the ambulances outside the nightclub. And when the screen goes white, it’s not quite the cleansing white we need but a kind of grey that then begins to flicker wildly like a strobe light reminding, in case we get too comfortable of the hell that has gone before and in effect is to come for the protagonists.
The final shot is of the words “time destroys all things”. It is a bit like hammering the message home but maybe we need it after being battered and beaten with such horrific imagery as the first half of ‘Irreversible’!

I think that there is a large difference between violence (sex, whathaveyou) for gratuity’s sake and a graphic level of violence (et al) that is there to make a point. Films like “Hostel” and whatever the next slasher franchise is, are only around to titillate (the filmmakers or the audience, it doesn’t really matter) and so they conceive of more and more violence, gore and bizarre ways to tell the same story over and over again (like pornography). The films that explicitly show violence on-screen but are more concerned with how it affects the characters and/or the audience is a different piece of fruit altogether. I would firmly place Irreversible in this second grouping.

Gaspar Noe, while one for the extremes of celluloid, is certainly not someone who takes his depiction of violence lightly. I think that there are a few things happening in Irreversible between social commentary, exploring character actions, and exploring audience participation. His first feature, “Seul contre tous”, dealt with such a despicable main character that there could almost be no sympathy, or really any other connection, between him and the audience. Noe was representing the dregs of society. He opens Irreversible on the same character, years later, after being released from prison, and rather quickly descends (and ascends) to our main characters, who, for the most part, are just your regular citizens. Noe is saying, partially, “okay, so you didn’t like my first character because you couldn’t relate to him, here’s an everyman put in an—unfortunately—common situation. If this were you, how would you react?” With Irreversible, Noe is asking us to decide if we—the moralists—could conceivably turn our heads to our morals and let ourselves avenge a wrong.

The tricky thing about the film is that we do not know that Noe is asking us this question until after the film is at least half-way over. We watch with horror, repugnance or fascination as the two main characters brutally kill a man, only to find out later that it was perhaps justified. This man supposedly raped and put Marcus’ girlfriend in a coma. When this is revealed Noe is asking his audience to stand up and account for their ethics. Is the murder now justified that we found out it was done unto a man who brutally raped and beat Marcus’ lover? As the story continues to unfold, however, we realize that the person who they killed was the wrong man—and the man who did rape Alex was standing by at the club enjoying the whole thing. For those members of the audience who had answered that the murder was justified, this revelation brings a pretty big slap in the face. When vengeance is meted out, it is questionable that it is ever just.

As the film wraps up, the jocular and reactionary Marcus actually gets depth to his character when he is alone with Alex—we are witness to the private moments of a couple in love—which of course not only makes what we have already been through that much more excruciating, but also gives more motivation to Marcus’ vengeance. Throughout most of the film Marcus is really just a boy—reveling in whatever vices are put in front of him—but in private, he is able to reveal his weaknesses, his humanity. He hasn’t “grown up” by the end of the film, rather he has become a true child (with the “2001” Star Child above their bed as an indication not only of Alex’s pregnancy, but more to the point, of Marcus’ own naivete and childishness). The coda to the film exists almost out of time. Alex is alone with her book in a park, the perfect expression of a pastoral (suburban) landscape, as the camera starts to twirl, a flicker illuminates the screen. It isn’t the black and white alternating frames, but, rather, there are stars in the black field. We are sent into the cosmos, into the vision of the Star Child: of the universe before us, where time has no meaning because everything has been destroyed and is surviving at the same moment. Time may destroy all, as Noe closes out the film, but timelessness incorporates all.

To address the actual structure and style of the film is, for me, where Noe is able to push this journey into a great piece of art. What some filmmakers have been playing around with (Tarantino, Nolan) Noe is able to execute without the hindrance of a conceit. I do not believe that this story could have been told any other way without it loosing its artistry. Put in chronological order we get an average revenge story told fairly well, but the moral questions of the film would not really be there, and all of the “reveals” would become normal plot conventions (the victim is pregnant, the perpetrator gets away with it) instead of a moral thermometer for the audience.

I, for one, don’t think that the film revels in its base characters. I think that it is unflinching, but what it shows is a necessary evil. It is more important that realistic depictions of common horrific events get shown to try and offset the cartoon violence that almost every Hollywood action film puts out. There are no moral questions in films such as “Lord of the Rings” but in films like this or “Funny Games”, the directors are asking the audience to actively be a part of the proceedings. It is less an examination of a story than it is of one’s own self. These are the works of art that are able to stand the test of time because the questions they are posing are the universal ones.

This gets 4.5 stars for the techniques and narrative structure, and 0 stars for the content. As far as I can tell, this film is a very powerful but ultimately soulless exercise in empty nihilism that gets off on its own sense of brutality. It’s disturbing to me because it seems, for the most part, to enjoy what it’s doing. It does try to move towards something deeper near the end, but it ultimately excitingly spends the most concentration in aesthetically beautiful ways to make viewers vomit. But to me, the most upsetting thing is that the overall voice of the film (and not just the characters contained within) seems almost a mocking, sociopathic one.

Esta pelicula es increible de tantas maneras. Increible y horrible y triste y real.Siendo mujer vivo obsesionada con el miedo a ser violada y en esta pelicula hay una escena (sin duda la mas comentada) de un ultraje de casi diez minutos, DIEZ MINUTOS, diez minutos equivalentes a una eternidad. Sin embargo, la estructura de esta pelicula, es muy util para llegar al espectador, ya que (sin contar toda la pelicula) las escenas son revertidas, no tienen ninguna relacion con el tiempo como lo experimentamos nosotros los humanos( a no ser una premonicion, que es uno de los planteamientos de la pelicula) y por eso no te da tiempo para conocer en su intimidad a los personajes e identificarte con ellos hasta que ya es muy tarde para haber una solucion feliz o justa para la pareja interpretada por monica bellucci y vincent cassel y tu te quedas sentado en tu asiento con la boca abierta, sin ninguna esperanza ni fe en la humanidad, sabiendo que nadie en la tierra, ni una burguesa que vive en el mejor de los mundos, es imune a la tragedia.

“Le temps detruit tout”…

Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex, played by Italian supermodel and actress Monica Bellucci, is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass. Her boyfriend Marcus, played by French actor and Monica Bellucci’s husband Vincent Cassel, and ex-lover Pierre take matters into their own hands by hiring two criminals to help them find the rapist so that they can exact revenge.

A simultaneously beautiful and terrible examination of the destructive nature of cause and effect, and how time destroys everything.

This movie is strictly for the mature audiences! There is a lot of explicit material, which may be ill-suited for some individuals. Overall, I thought the cinematography and music were amazing! I just adore Vincent Cassel and he doesn’t let you down in this film either!

i thought it was interesting from an aesthetic and narrative stand point, but besides that i didnt really get much out of it. there seemed to be some major homophobic and conservative undertones to it, and while i do think that depicting graphic violence can be used effectively (even something as horrifying as rape), in this movie it just seemed to be used so the filmmaker could get more publicity, and it seems like he was extremely successful in that regard.

Sick, sick, sick. One of the greatest movies of recent times though. It’s the horrid rape violence movie that was made so brutally so that there would be no need for more.

Then douchebags make movies like Hostel, or Caos, or whatnot.

They miss the concept that even if they really do want to make just a shocking film, like really fuck with people’s minds, they have to put content and heart into it. Noe I feel is a deranged fuck but at least he means it when he does it.

Good thing.