FilmBlather.com

"Time destroys everything."

Irreversible has incited near-riots at some of the festivals in which it played, and created a traffic jam at the door with walkouts everywhere. Often when a movie riles controversy, it is a result of people having a stick up their collective ass, or just plain misinterpreting what's on the screen. But in the case of Gaspar Noe's genuine, down-to-the-bone shocker, the hullabaloo is merited. The righteous moral outrage may not be deserved, but it is at least understandable. It's true, what they say: this is one of the most gruesome and difficult to watch pieces of mainstream cinema ever filmed.

It should not, however, be dismissed as cheap gimmickry or a pointless shock tactic. The reason that Noe's film has been refusing to leave me alone for roughly the past week is that he uses his grotesque imagery to competently advance a theme, and to craft an intricate, meticulous, powerful experience. It's polarizing, yes, and horrifying, but there isn't the feeling that it was created specifically to be that (except at one crucial point, and more on that later). I rarely get profoundly disturbed by mere contextless imagery nowadays. There is more to Irreversible than that.

Fans of Christopher Nolan's Memento may be taken aback by the very similar plot structure here: the film moves backward in time, with the plot's ultimate event being the first thing we see (following a trippy opening credit sequence that sent the projectionist running upstairs to see what was wrong, and a prologue that sets up Noe's mantra). It tells a seemingly simple revenge story. We see Marcus (Vincent Cassel), in a boundless fury, roaming a gay club called "The Rectum" looking for "Le Tenia," the man who presumably raped his girlfriend Alex. His friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) tries in vain to console him. The scene ends with a man getting beaten to death with a fire extinguisher, though who does the beating and who is the victim I will leave for you to discover, if I don't scare you off.

Having set up his conflict in such an attention-grabbing way, Noe proceeds to reveal the details. Pierre, we learn, was Alex's husband prior to her relationship with Marcus, but the three of them have managed to remain friends. Alex was raped while traversing a seedy underpass, after having a falling-out with Marcus at a party. We also find out that after the rape, which leaves Alex in a coma, Marcus and Pierre are approached by a pair of seedy gentlemen who offer them the kind of vengeance the police won't provide.

During everything leading up to the rape scene (in the film, not chronologically), Noe's camera lurches and spins, making it difficult to discern what is happening, and making for an exceedingly disorienting visual experience. The entirety of the club scene is spent with our field of vision enduring seemingly impossible contortions. Then, as the chaos of the movie reaches its pinnacle, the camera all of a sudden stops, and the rape scene is filmed in a single, nearly stationary, excruciating nine minute take. Bellucci in this scene is, as Owen Gleiberman has already asserted, "heroic".

From there on, the film is downright placid. The temptation is to tune out, as Noe has ceased shocking us into submission, but be careful: some of the most thematically significant events occur here. The final shot, aside from the fact that it should come with a "may induce seizures" warning, is perhaps the the most unforgettable; the film has gone from hell to heaven and back again. The title card is a bit much, but that vision of the spinning playground absolutely refuses to leave my thoughts.

Even the critics who liked Irreversible have taken potshots at its main theme, "time destroys everything." It's true that I could have done without it being shoved down my throat. Nonetheless, I am enamored of the idea that our future is determined neither by predestination nor free will, but by something in between, the concept of fate as a temporal phenomenon. Yeah, I thought after walking out, time is a bastard.

I mentioned that there was one occasion on which I felt that Noe was using shock tactics for their own sake. That comes at the end of the rape scene when, in what might be Irreversible's most horrifying moment, the assailant begins to smash Alex's head against the floor. The camera, which had remained in one spot for what must have been an eternity, suddenly spins around to, it seemed to me, get a better angle. Through most of his movie, Gaspar Noe toes the line between art and exploitation; for that one brief, unfortunate moment, he crosses it.