Irreversible

I've been tempted to read from one of my newly acquired books - maybe Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival, or perhaps the interesting-looking The Jane Austen Book Club. In fact that was my plan for tonight. But the movie I saw yesterday has only intensified in my thoughts, and I've been browsing the internet to find useful articles and interpretations of it.

One thing is clear - it was very controversial in 2002 (now why didn't I ever hear about it? banned on our local circuit, no doubt ...). Just to prop up the sensationalism, over 200 people walked out at Cannes - some had to receive oxygen treatment. Yes I kid you not, that's what I read - and I can almost believe it. As I'm sitting here I can still feel the fits of upset emotion swimming around me, jabbing me in the side, or tugging at my insides. This movie will not be forgotten soon. Haha, and to think I wanted a good movie to round off the weekend, haha. I know someone who's got a lot of explaining to do when I return his DVD!

Another thing that's clear: Gaspar Noe, the Argentinian-born director, intended it to be controversial (now there's a surprise!). But more interestingly, it started out as just a story about an adult sexual relationship. He wanted explicit sex, but something intimate. Belucci and Cassel didn't like the script - and that's when it became Irreversible. Apparently many scenes were improvised and almost all of them shot by handheld. I can't remember having seen so many swinging camera shots - shots that focus on the periphery of the action, circling it with a kind of geometrical method.

It turned out to be his project for a replacement of the Kubrick movie everyone hoped would be so much more: Eyes Wide Shut. Well much of the interest that EWS promised but did not deliver, Irreversible shakes out with a considerable emphasis on shock and raw emotion.

This last fact - Kubrick's influence - is nowhere clearer than at the end when the 2001: A Space Odyssey poster flits across the screen twice, in an interesting movement that's somehow reminiscent of the view from inside a plane taking off. And then reversing that same view. The step not beyond. The odyssey never taken ... the baby that will never be born.

Ok I've done that to death now. Maybe I'll do a proper write-up on it some time. I'm in two minds about it at present. It was meant as an art film - not just a shocker. It's really well crafted. And there is certainly no glamour in the violence and violations - it's all portrayed as pretty horrible and nasty, a grim day for humankind all around. On the other hand, there are arguments that view the film as a mysoginist fantasy. And my opinion hasn't fixed itself yet.