Enter The Void by Gaspar Noé

i interviewed him the day after and he was incredibly hungover and stinky and paz de la huerta kept calling him and asking for aspirin

this is def movie of the year for me

in 1986 it was 'children of a lesser god' for me

I saw this with a Q+A on Thursday night. It was absorbing, but nowhere near great or even *impressive*. A floaty sprawl into nowhere and back. Somewhat menacing and atmospheric, but hardly moving or scary like a good Lynch film or something...this is the key to why it was only 7/10 for me.

Max Tundra/ben was at the screening..we had a chat!

yeah i can't say i loved this... it was really something, to be sure, but also just kinda lacking in real oomph beyond the cinematics - which i did enjoy a bunch. also it just goes on for way too fucken long

ha this interview is full of gems

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/blogs/film/2010-09-14/gaspar-noe-enter-the-void/

enjoyed this quite a bit, though i am guilty of taking a smoke break. decent celeb spotting at the screening. A+++ WOULD SEE AGAIN

Love these trailers. Unfortunately, this is showing at an arthouse theater in Chicago without the best sound and picture -- seems like one to see in as state-of-the-art a theater as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCVmy5bCf58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_SgLWefSfY&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbUSHkOEyOs&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKzLGgTbAe0&feature=related

Hmm, On demand, too

Saw it this afternoon, left me a mixture of amazed/awed and frustrated.

The bad: if I'd had an ounce of compassion for the characters (Linda esp. was the very worst kind of whiny idiot) then I think the emotional intensity that Noe was trying for might have worked. But it was just a case of stuff happening to them and, other than the really visceral bits like the crash and the shooting, I was left thinking "so what?". Other than Alex they were all total dicks - doubtless Noe made a decision to write the characters as obnoxious fuck-ups, but the aimed for profundity of their experiences was lost on me because of this.

The good: an astonishing aesthetic and technical tour de force. I'm rarely blown away by the visuals of modern films, but this was something else. The merging of sound design, music and cinematography was incredibly effective too. What I took away from it the most was probably a series of isolated elements eg. the DMT trip, the streets of Tokyo from below and above, and especially the whole Love Hotel sequence. If Noe could have married this stuff with even slightly engaging characters and/or plot then this film could have been *incredible*.

yeah, Alex was a cool dude

man, the car accident scenes have been sticking with me for days. Just the long scenes of young Linda's hysterics and young Oscar's stunned confusion was just the most gut-wrenching part of this movie hands down.

Yeah, I should clarify that the flashback/life-before-yr-eyes stuff with the kids were almost the only bits that felt successful with regard to making me feel a connection with the characters; the late on scene with Oscar and Linda strapped in behind their dead parents was fucking heavy and I just wish more of it could have been so directly powerful.

the rollercoaster->car crash edit was pretty intense

yeh the screaming wee girl was pretty intense. cared nothing for any of the characters proper at all. the bit with dopey oscar walking down the stairs behind alex eh explaining the book of the dead was really funny these foreign people in tokyo was like whit stillman or something I did like it when alex asked oscar for some water and then asked to take the water with them though. the drifting bits were pretty incredible maybe the best bits other than the opening titles which were def the best bit but the drifting bits did just go on too long and so did other stuff really wasn't enjoying it by the end and some of the more graphic bits were a bit yawn and there were a few lols at the back of the cinema. was really impressed by titles and then quite immersed for the first maybe 30 mins or so and then some pretty cool bits through the rest but yeah was fairly wanting it to end after a while one of those films though that a few days after seeing it I think that was really quite amazing and I think of what it looked like and some of the none-lame atmospherics rather than the stupid stuff seems silly to worry about reality or some idea of believability or sense in plot when it's doing the other stuff on balance it was good

the rollercoaster->car crash edit was pretty intense

seriously, i got a warm tingle that went from the front of my head down the back of my neck, like someone cracked a warm egg on me

uhh someone did

GN on hand at cinemas to assist with egg cracking.

Drifting bits that conrad refs felt to me like there was a debt owed to Michel Gondry's "Protection" vid for Massive Attack, at least stylistically. Also made me wonder why a dead dude on oobe trip would spend so much time looking at the damn ground (then again, when it was live Oscar's POV he spent half the time staring at road markings too).

i can't imagine how amazing this movie would be to me if i was like 19

or having a near-death experience

When/if I finally buy a projector then this will be a blu-ray must buy and I intend to get properly baked and see how it works when in an altered state. Am with you though, Whiney, reckon teenage me would have glossed over the hateful characters and just been "wauuuuuuuuuuuuuu".

yeah this is gonna be like Pi to like 2010's college freshmen for real tho

was a wee bit like requiem for a dream too in bits which I hate

yes, most def

ya, i didnt like being reminded of that stupid movie

haven't seen enter the void, but requiem deserves at least two stupids

No way this doesn't end up my favorite movie of the year.

Gaspar Noé describes the subject of the film as "the sentimentality of mammals and the shimmering vacuity of the human experience."

boy, can't wait.

(actually i will see this, despite my best intentions, so i should ask: is this gonna be one of those pointless to catch on dvd deals?)

don't think the opening credits would have quite the same impact on a telly and too tempting to stop it to go and do a piss although maybe something it could benefit from

is this gonna be one of those pointless to catch on dvd deals

watching this on a big screen in the dark is kind of crucial to what dude is going for. don't miss it

it would certainly lose a lot on a small screen - the only place that showed it near me was the local arthouse cinema which has a screen about 1/6 of the size of the ones in the multiplex, so we sat right down the front. It is *very* immersive in parts, and I think this comes down to the incredible sound design as well as the visuals - plenty of points where 20 minutes would pass and I'd suddenly think "I'm sitting in a cinema watching this" because I was so hooked into it.

yup - agree with conrad and whiney on that.

Waaaaaay too long. If I want to watch amazing visuals and characters I don't give a shit about, I'll stick to Speed Racer thank you. This was pretty poor.

No way this doesn't end up my favorite movie of the year.

― Eric H.

So it's homophobic, eh?

A remarkable failure on the part of filmmakers worldwide if this winds up anybody's best film of the year.

It's Eric! He loves, you know, Dario Argento.

caught this through the IFC On-Demand feature. i'm sure it was definitely a lesser experience on a small screen, but i was still completely !!!O_O!!! through the first 30 minutes or so. it does lose a bit of its luster as it goes on and the premise is pretty dopey, but as a strictly audio/visual experience it's kinda fucking awesome and certainly much more of a spectacle than something like Avatar was advertised to be.

but not as much as Speed Racer.

Eric likes De Palma and Argento, so I think we might have a similar appreciation for this sorta thing.

I haven't seen Speed Racer. Maybe I should.

If it's trippy crazy visuals with characters you don't give a shit about, it looks better and is much, much shorter.

this movie is so goofy. but im looking forward to seeing it again.

and ya it shoulda been an hour shorter. but i feel like i say that about everything these days.

total kudos to the fact that Paz De La Huerta wasn't the worst thing about it. That's an achievement.

i dont understand who u are giving kudos to

I am watching all three Noé films for the first time this week. Not sure whether to dread or anticipate.

jesus, anticipate the dread. bailed on irreversible about halfway through. have since played the cruel joke of recommending it to friends, most of whom don't make it through the first scene.

when I'm not on my phone I'll link to my interview

I mean, I haven't seen this, but I have to bet that it out-DePalmas DePalma by 100000%. Would love to see Gaspar's Body Double.

I think I've been exposed to enough over-the-top violence of all stripes over the last three years (new wave of French horror, Ex-Drummer, A Serbian Film etc.)that I am pretty much, if not totally desensitized, at least far less likely to be viscerally upset by movie violence. It's more the tireless misanthropy/juvenalia that worries me, something that's def in evidence in I Stand Alone, which I'm currently halfway through.

Noé do i wanna see this

the crane shots of tokyo / the 'wow...tokyo on acid' scale model thereof were great

really it isn't a film whose rarified qualities are best appreciated by describing scenes diagramatically any more than attempting to convey the greatness of 'mirror' might be helped by describing the scenes where tarkovsky's mother runs around a deserted dreamscape and washes her hair in a room full of falling plasterwork and then there's a shot of some grass blowing in the wind etc etc

even when you try to recollect it, one wonders how it is that loads of seamless crane shots in and through buildings didn't look like a trailer for the sims as filmed by jodorowsky, but really it doesn't seem at all like that whilst watching

the soundtrack is notweworthy too...lfo, karkowski, lucier....

i guess i just wasn't as absorbed by those long shots as i was by tarkovsky's long shots ... another example would be at the beginning when he was watching his DMT hallucination against the ceiling, very slow

i guess i don't really care for diegetic time in movies, esp when imo he's already covered that base via the POV, but yeah, maybe i just have a short attention span because though i enjoy stalker and solaris enough to own copies i still find myself checking my watch a lot during those

i'm a johnny-come-lately, but i've just seen this and irreversible ... and for once, Morbz's bitchy dismissiveness is totally 100% OTM. i can get w/ stylized, disturbing ultraviolence (i.e., i like Takashi Miike films). Gaspar Noe, however, is just pretentious & repulsive nonsense.

also, i wonder if any epileptics have sued Noe (or the theaters that showed this) yet -- they might have a case!

dunno if there's a thread for this but I would definitely nominate this for "film that's way more fun to talk about than it is to actually watch"

i love the harsh ambient qualities of noe's stuff, esp the last ten minutes of irreversible and at least the first half of void - he really nails that white light floaty rush of gd mdma like no other filmmaker imho - and i absolutely can't think of anything that's pretentious abt his movies - some of the verry long take shots passing over tokyo streets at the start of void are a considered and sincere technical exercise in spatial/temporary fuckery - it's also quite a hopeful film, too (we have been here before and we will be here again)

noe and dumont ftw!

co-sign 100% of that post

"gd MDMA"

feel the LOVE, morbs

not to pick on you, ward, but this:

it's also quite a hopeful film, too (we have been here before and we will be here again)

contradicts this:

i absolutely can't think of anything that's pretentious abt his movies

at least in my mind.

to wit: bullshit metaphysical posturing (which Noe himself doesn't even subscribe to, in his own words) and puerile camera tricks (i.e., the PussyCam, complete w/ thrusting cock, sperm and ova).

it's better than irreversible, i'll give it that much. and Noe has good taste in the (better) directors from whom he steals (e.g., Lynch, Kubrick, Tarantino, Kalatozov).

x-post

i dunno, it's not an original idea - it's kind of a buddhist sentiment, isn't it? - but pretentious how? i mean, noe makes it p clear in irreversible that TIME - real time - drug time - eternal time - is a v big interest of his - and imho it's a good subject to investigate in a durational medium like film (and i don't think you have to be a believer - apart from IN CINEMA lol - in any sense to also be interested in this subject)

Every Noé film has some amazing technical tricks, and foregrounds them in the service of misanthropy, sophomoric chin stroking and flat characters. Still there aren't many directors doing art cinema carnival rides, and that's enough reason for me to like his films.

I've heard a lot of talk about this film and I'm starting to think I might have found this film sadder than anyone else who'd seen it. Nodody told me it was sad but I think I might get weepy if I see it again; I was a little bit upset in bed after seeing this. The music at the last sex scene is gorgeous, need to find out who did that.

It was too long but it didn't drag nearly as bad as I was told.

I couldn't find many cheap and decent DVD versions of this and I'm not sure if the copy I got was poor or if my DVD player wasn't good enough for it, because the picture wasn't great, so I feel like I haven't experienced the film properly yet. Reluctant to get a bluray machine (are there multi-region players yet?)

pretty posi you can easily score or make Blu-Ray players region free these days? Though I don't know for sure. I'm sure Oppo makes some.

Michael Gira posted about this on the Swans Facebook page just the other day:

this is a great film, and apparently a disaster for all concerned (except the lucky ones who have seen it). i met gaspar noe in paris recently. we hung out and drank a bit. i started talking about God, and i think i either scared him or repelled him or disgusted him. anyway, it was nice to meet such a true genius....

Better than those lousy fake geniuses eh Mike

We watched this last night because my 17-yr-old son is kind of a Noe fan. He'd watched Climax and Irreversible, I'd only seen Climax, which I mostly enjoyed for its energy but also found a bit tedious. "A bit tedious" is a big understatement for Enter the Void, which imo is much too long and mostly focused on all the wrong things.

It was not nearly as freaky or psychedelic as I was expecting. The idea of rendering the experience of death and reincarnation in a movie is nervy enough, and I was ready for Noe to really run with it. But it stays disappointingly earthbound, wrapped up in a boring narrative about dumb unlikable people. The only parts I really liked were the ones with FX and CGI and crazy swooping filmmaking, but those were interspersed with long scenes about uninteresting characters. Bleah.