Rate filmmaker Gaspar Noe and his classic Enter the Void

[Real McCoy]

Would you watch his work with your family or friends or even alone

 

Here's his wiki entry:

 

Artistry

His work has been strongly associated with a series of films defined as the cinéma du corps/cinema of the body, which according to Tim Palmer share an attenuated use of narrative, generally assaulting and often illegible cinematography, confrontational subject material, a treatment of sexual behavior as violent rather than mutually intimate, and a pervasive sense of social nihilism or despair.^[4]

Noé often breaks the fourth wall by directly addressing the audience through the use of confronting, and sometimes strobing, typography that aims to "disrupt and disturb" the viewer, similar to the typographical methods practised by Jean-Luc Godard.^[5]

Three of his films feature the character of a nameless butcher played by Philippe Nahon: Carne, I Stand Alone and, in a cameo, Irréversible.

Influences

The films of Stanley Kubrick are one source of inspiration for Noé, and he occasionally makes references to them in his own works. Noé stated in the September 2012 edition of Sight & Sound magazine that seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of seven changed his life, without which experience he would never have become a director.^[6]

Noé also cites the 1983 Austrian serial killer film, Angst, by Gerald Kargl, as a major influence.^[7]

 

Filmography

Feature films

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Producer	Editor
1998	I Stand Alone	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
2002	Irréversible	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
2009	Enter the Void	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
2015	Love	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
2018	Climax	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
2019	Lux Æterna	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
2021	Vortex	Yes	Yes	No	No

Short films

• Tintarella di luna (1985)
• Pulpe amère (1987)
• Carne (1991)
• Une expérience d'hypnose télévisuelle (1995)
• Sodomites (1998)
• We *(fvck - got censored ) Alone (1998) segment of Destricted
• Intoxication (2002)
• Eva (2005)
• SIDA (2008) segment of 8
• Ritual (2012) segment of 7 Days in Havana
• Shoot (2014) segment of Short Plays

 

Here's the wiki entry on Enter the Void

 

Plot

Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) lives in Tokyo with his younger sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) and supports himself by dealing drugs, against the advice of his friend Alex (Cyril Roy), who attempts to turn Oscar's interest toward The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a Buddhist book about the afterlife. The first segment begins with Linda leaving for work (at a local strip club) and then follows Oscar's nightly routine through strict point-of-view shots, including momentary blackouts that represent blinking, private internal thoughts, and extended sequences of a DMT-induced hallucination.

Next, Alex meets Oscar at the apartment and they leave so that Oscar can deliver drugs to his friend Victor (Olly Alexander). On the way, Alex explains parts of The Tibetan Book of the Dead to Oscar: how the spirit of a dead person sometimes stays among the living until it begins to experience nightmares, after which it attempts to reincarnate. They arrive at a bar called The Void. Oscar enters alone and sits down with a distressed Victor, who mutters "I'm sorry" before they are swarmed by police officers. Oscar seals himself in a bathroom stall and attempts to flush his drugs. When the flush does not work, he yells through the door that he has a gun and will shoot. In response, a police officer opens fire and hits Oscar, who falls to the floor.

Oscar's viewpoint rises and looks at his body from above, and then we begin to witness his life in a non-chronological order. His loving parents were killed in a violent car crash; Oscar and Linda, devoted to each other, were sent to different foster homes; Oscar moved to Tokyo and earned money through drug dealing until he could afford to bring Linda to live with him; Oscar sleeps with his friend Victor's mother in return for extra money to help bring his sister over; Linda found work as a stripper for the nightclub owner Mario, to Oscar's distress; Oscar increased the scope of his dealing operations and started using potent psychedelics—in particular, DMT—more frequently; Victor discovered that Oscar slept with his mother; and finally, we again see Oscar meet Victor at The Void to sell him drugs, only to be shot in the bathroom.

Afterwards, a disembodied Oscar floats over Tokyo and witnesses the aftermath of his death. Linda becomes withdrawn and despondent, especially after getting an abortion; Oscar's dealer, Bruno, destroys his stash; Alex lives in hiding on the streets; and Linda wishes she had been with Alex instead of Mario, as Oscar had wanted. On one occasion, Linda wishes that Oscar would come back to life; Oscar then enters Linda's head, and experiences her dream in which he wakes up at the morgue, from which his body is taken to be cremated.

Meanwhile, Victor and his mother scream at each other because she had sex with Oscar, and because of that Victor had informed the police about Oscar's drug dealing; Victor is then thrown out of his parents' home. He shows up at Linda's apartment and apologizes for having had her brother killed, but says Linda is partially to blame since she hung around with creeps. This angers Linda, who repeatedly screams that Victor should just go kill himself.

The perspective now hovers high above Tokyo and enters an airplane, where Oscar's mother breast-feeds a baby Oscar. The view then drops to Linda and Alex, who take a taxi to a Tokyo love hotel and have sex. The perspective moves among hotel rooms and observes several other couples having sex in various positions. Each couple emanates a pulsating electric-like pink glow from their genitals. Oscar enters Alex's head and witnesses the sex with Linda from Alex's point of view. He then travels inside Linda's vagina to witness Alex's thrusting, then observes his ejaculation and follows the semen into the fertilization of his sister's ovum. The final scene is shot from the perspective of a baby being born to Oscar's mother. According to the director, this is a flashback to Oscar's birth in the form of a false memory.^[10]

Edited September 12, 2021 by Real McCoy

[EnterTheVoid]

Now that's out of the way, onto the topic of Gaspar Noe.

 

Given the depth of film making knowledge posters such as @zen , @ravishingravi, @Mariyam and @Gollum can bring to the table, I think we can have an informed discussion.

 

Enter The Void is an experimental film; from a cinematography sense, it is the work of an artist that is trying to show us something new.

 

The movie was shot in the red light district area of Kabukicho. Kabukicho is seedy and patrolled by the Yakuza but, it is in the commercial and financial district of Shinjuku. Any visitor who goes to Tokyo is recommended to do sightseeing in Shinjuku (speaking from personal experience here, spent two months travelling solo around Japan).

 

Kabukicho and Shinjuku are exactly how they are portrayed in the film. Kabukicho is full of "sex replacement services" such as cuddle cafes, hostess bars etc (topic for another day). Shinjuku is neon city at night.

 

In a drug deal gone wrong, the main character passes away and aimlessly drifts around Tokyo. "The Tibetan Book Of The Dead" is not some occult mumbo jumbo, it's their treatise on death and reincarnation (or that's how I understand it). Buddhism borrows a lot from Hinduism anyway.

 

Enter The Void is a 3 hour long psychedelic melodrama. And in my view, is a one time watch only (sorry, don't have 3 hours to spare). It is also not recommended viewing for people who suffer from seizures.

 

Some people found it profoundly boring (bit unfair in my view, the camera work gets repetitive but calling the movie boring is going a bit too far). Some were just amazed at the technical brilliance of the film making.

 

I can't speak of Gaspar's other work, I only saw the first half of Irreversible. And I haven't seen any of his other work. 

 

@ravishingravi can give you a treatise on Gaspar Noe and Stanley Kubrick. He is a great film buff. Or he was, when we met in Mumbai in 2011. 

 

 

 

 

[Real McCoy]

The main point of the OP is whether this movie is watchable with family and friends not a lengthy cinematic review. as enzerdabungbung as stated, it involves seedy red light districts, drugs and other perverted topics. is this something you would be happy to watch it with your family. I had the unfortunate happenstance to have watched Irreversible also a Gaspar Noe film as my roommate rented that film. He rented that out looking for some sex scene which turned out to be one long rape scene There were 4/5 of us who watched it and none of us liked it. So its not a pleasant thing to watch it with horny young guys as well. I see @Mariyam voted on a post. Mariyam, would you watch such movies with your family or friends.

 

This is from a wiki entry of Irreversible:

 

Irréversible has been associated with a series of films defined as the cinéma du corps ("cinema of the body"), which according to Palmer^[5] includes: an attenuated use of narrative, assaulting and often illegible cinematography, confrontational subject material, and a pervasive sense of social nihilism or despair. Irréversible has also been associated with the New French Extremity movement.

The film was particularly controversial upon its release for its graphic portrayal of violence, specifically the scene where a man is savagely bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher and its 10-minute long take rape of Alex (Monica Bellucci), who is then brutally beaten into a coma. The film also attracted accusations of homophobia. American film critic Roger Ebert called Irréversible "a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable"

[Mariyam]

^ May not watch the movie.

But I did like ETV's write up.

[ravishingravi]

Gaspar Noe is an agent provocateur. It’s no secret what his movies are going to be like. If you are going to watch his work with your family, this would leave everyone traumatized unless you are very “special” kind of family. 
 

Such filmmakers don’t make film for families or friends. They just to make statements. 

[EnterTheVoid]

Well said Ravi.

 

Movies for the family? Watching Irreversible with "friends"? 

 

Lol, belong in a nut house  

Edited September 13, 2021 by EnterTheVoid

[Real McCoy]

can't get me out of your head, can ya

 

[Real McCoy]

3 hours ago, ravishingravi said:

Gaspar Noe is an agent provocateur. It’s no secret what his movies are going to be like. If you are going to watch his work with your family, this would leave everyone traumatized unless you are very “special” kind of family. 
 

Such filmmakers don’t make film for families or friends. They just to make statements. 

He sure is. But who will fund such a director if his movies are box office failures. One must entertain the possibility that these movies are designed to make a negative impact on the cultural mores of a nation or the whole world in today's global society. This is not the first time its been happening. It happened in Weimar republic in Germany after the first world war. Films were made to advance social degradation and things like homosexuality and pederasty were encouraged.

If one doesn't learn from history, he is doomed to repeat it. by promoting social degradation is akin to treason and only the parasites of the host society such as the movie industry or outsiders thrive under such a state. And don't we have an agent provocateur amidst us in the name of a cricket fan here. He posts nothing on cricket but has these kinda themes on his profile. He once had a crossdresser as his profile picture and that movie is also violent like Gaspar Noe's

[Real McCoy]

8 hours ago, EnterTheVoid said:

 

Says the vamos_retard who literally can't shut up about this topic. And does not pass up an opportunity to do useless psycho analysis no one asked for.

 

How are the piles going? 

what's your problem. I have free time and will do as I please. If you are not interested in this topic, stop posting here. you seem flustered. everyone will know from your behavior here that you are not someone who should be trusted with especially with your deviant tastes in movies. What wonderful words you use. And you talk about upbringing. Show some class loser

[EnterTheVoid]

1 hour ago, Real McCoy said:

what's your problem. I have free time and will do as I please. If you are not interested in this topic, stop posting here. you seem flustered. everyone will know from your behavior here that you are not someone who should be trusted with especially with your deviant tastes in movies. What wonderful words you use. And you talk about upbringing. Show some class loser

 

10+ years on forum without a problem.

 

Than comes  this vamos_retard with his internet psychobabble that nobody asked for. Obsessing about a movie and giving morality lectures to strangers on an internet forum. Takes the high horse about his upbringing whilst wishing harm and death on other posters. 

 

Got bashed like a pinjata yesterday. Now that he has retreated with his tail between his legs, plays the victim card.

 

Lipstick on a pig, still a pig.

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by EnterTheVoid

[Real McCoy]

2 hours ago, EnterTheVoid said:

 

10+ years on forum without a problem.

 

Than comes  this vamos_retard with his internet psychobabble that nobody asked for. Obsessing about a movie and giving morality lectures to strangers on an internet forum. Takes the high horse about his upbringing whilst wishing harm and death on other posters. 

 

Got bashed like a pinjata yesterday. Now that he has retreated with his tail between his legs, plays the victim card.

 

Lipstick on a pig, still a pig.

 

you are projecting loser. good joke that you consider I was bashed. If I was, you should be happy. Yet you come back to get some more pwnage

[EnterTheVoid]

24 minutes ago, Real McCoy said:

you are projecting loser. good joke that you consider I was bashed. If I was, you should be happy. Yet you come back to get some more pwnage

 

Happy about what, vamos_retard?

Edited September 14, 2021 by EnterTheVoid