Enter the Void (2009)- Review

Watched. 

My rating: 7.6/10. 

 

 Watching this movie and then confronting absolutely frustrating people in real life afterwards, has really resulted in a bad mood. The worst part about such confrontations is that the scenario keeps playing in loop long after the quarrel itself. The argument is not over because you're still there, in that time, among those toxic idiots in your brain. Still yelling and shouting and screaming like a maniac. I'm not a violent person, but sometimes I wish I was. Wouldn't it be so great to utilize brawn without any consequences?

  Anyways, Enter the Void is my third Gaspar Noe film. Its about a young drug dealer who gets dies while he's high on D.M.T. We experience the story through his first person perspective. In the afterlife, he travels through time and space, visiting and watching over the people he knew. Because he is a spirit now, the camera conveniently flies through walls, doors, ceilings and even human bodies. The unbreakable barrier between the present and the past can't even stop our protagonist, and us to visit the characters back story.

  Oscar, the protagonist has died, but its after death that we realize that the characters left behind in the "alive" world are the ones who are stuck in their own personal hells. Just think about it, you think your loved one is dead but, they are always have an eye on you, even when you don't want them to. They are always there, listening, even when you're in your most vulnerable state... they basically know all your dark and dirty secrets. Just like how god is described, the person who has died has become a creep.

  It is also a commentary on how we, the audience, extract pleasure from perversity in art. You read a novel, or watch a movie, what is it that you are really doing? You are watching people (the characters). You're watching them in their happiness and their sadness, their highs and their lows, their public and their intimate moments. And the more intimate the details, the moments, get, the more thrill we get from them. Why? Is it that we get high on perversity and call it art? I don't think so. Art is more than just exploitation because of it's pursuit of understanding the human condition.

  That's the other thing about Gaspar Noe films: they walk the thin line between art and exploitation so masterfully, that it is difficult to imagine anyone else tackling the subject matter with such grace. From a technical standpoint, his films are such taut creations that you cannot, in good conscience, say that Gaspar doesn't know what he is doing. Such artistry is rare, and should be embraced instead of dismissing it as hogwash.

  The negatives for me were that I didn't feel emotionally invested in these characters. I loved that all of them were damaged, lost souls, but that was, apparently, not enough for me start welling up on their misfortunes. Another aspect of this film which I'm not really sure if it works all that well, is traversing. A lot of run time is spent on just traveling from point A to point B in this. Yes, it is visually very impressive (maybe this is where GTA 5 got character-switiching-animation idea from), but is it necessary? I guess the point of those scenes is that we spend most of our lives doing mundane tasks, lacking any action or drama. But does it make for good cinema? For some it does (like me), for some it doesn't.

  Enter the Void is a bold invitation of exploration in cinema, which declares in capital letters that it is not afraid of what it might encounter in the process.