Feb 17, 2004 10:36 PM
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(Updated Feb 17, 2004 10:36 PM)
Rape is probably one of THE biggest problems faced by today's ''civilized'' society. A lot of volunteer organizations have sprung up to help the victims associated with this heinous crime,as more and more people realize the physical and mental trauma that the victim and their families go through. The film industry too has come out with quite a few films that deal with rape and its after effects.
IRREVERSIBLE is another addition in the list of movies that has failed in dealing with such a sensitive subject.
WARNING-Irreversible is the most gruesome and disturbing movie that I have seen....so I do not recommend this movie to anyone who cannot stomach extremely explicit and violent content. The movie is a french movie, translated for release in hollywood.
Irreversible occurs in a chronologically reverse order. The only other film that has used this effect to my knowledge, is the fabulous MEMENTO. But unlike Memento, there was no need for Irreversible to be told in reverse order. It would have made no differeence to the plot. Probabaly the only reason Irreversible is told in this order is so that people do not leave the cinema halls with a sick feeling in their stomach.
The first half of the movie is definitely the most violent and explicit cinema that I have seen.The movie starts of in a gay club in Paris. A man named Marcus,along with his friend Pierre, is searching for a pimp called Le Tenia. Marcus then proceeds to brutally murder a person in the club, whom he mistakes to be the pimp.
The murder is the second most gruesome thing that I have seen in a movie...the first being the rape scene in this movie which I will come to later. Marcus kills the person in the club by brutally bashing his face with a fire-extinguisher repeatedly. I could not help but look away from the screen....it was just too violent. You can actual see the man's face being ground into a pulp. All I can say about this scene is that the special effects were awesome!
The movie then proceeds to go in reverse order. We accompany Marcus and Pierre on their search for La tenia, all the while wondering why they are hunting for him. We get a small tour of the streets of Paris and get to hear very explicit conversations between a visibly livid Marcus and some hookers.
We then zoom back to the most POWERFUL and most gruesome scene in the movie. A very attrractive and provocatively dressed woman is shown leaving a party. We learn later that the woman is Alex.....Marcus's better half.
Alex proceeds to go into a sub-way to cross the street. There, in the subway,she encounters a pimp( Le Tenia),who proceeds to rape and beat her in the most brutal and violent matter. He rapes her for more than 10 minutes(feels like an eternity)and during all this......the camera does not move an inch. The director, Gasper Noe, wanted the viewers to be disgusted and horrified that something so vile is taking place....and he does so very successfully. I was just waiting for the scene to finish...but the rape just went on and on and on and on and on..........
I say this scene is very powerful because it makes us think. It makes us think what the victim must be going through, if we cannot stand to even SEE the crime taking place. It makes us think whether the rapist is human.....whether a person who has comitted something so awful even deserves to live. It helps us understand Marcus's reaction to an extent. But the movie stays true to its purpose only till this very scene.
After this, the movie digresses from its main story. It turns into a semi-porn movie with sex talk and unnecessarily long scenes of Alex and Marcus cuddling in bed in their birthday suits. The last forty-five minutes of the movie moves at a snail's pace and I just could not see where the movie was trying to go. I guess the director just wanted to show us how happy they were with each other and their lives, not knowing about the grim future that lay in store for them.
I do not rate the movie poorly because of the gruesome and explicit depiction of the crime. In fact that is the reason why the movie even gets its two stars. The movie just leads nowhere after the rape scene and turns into pretty much a pornographic film. The shock of the first few minutes went away by the end of the film and I realised that there was absolutely no need for the movie to be in reverse order. I was just left with a hollow feeling of what the movie turned out to be......and what it could have been.
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Alex: Monica Bellucci
Marcus: Vincent Cassel
Pierre: Albert Dupontel
P.S.-MS crew....its irreversible not irreversable!!!!!!
