Even though he's only made three feature films, director Gaspar Noe has made a name for himself, especially as connected to the New French Extremity movement in cinema. His movies are dark, unsettling, and follow the theme that time destroys everything.
That theme is explicitly stated in "Irreversible", Noe's second film. The plot of this movie is simple: a woman is raped and her boyfriend teams up with her ex-boyfriend to get revenge.
What makes this movie unique is that the sequence of events is shown in reverse order. If you don't recognize that's what's going on, the movie will make absolutely no sense.
We begin at the ending of the story (actually, the movie starts with the end credits), and the final scene is where the story starts. By doing this, the entire theme of the revenge genre is turned on it's head. What would normally be seen as a movie about consequences now becomes a movie more about predestination. You get the impression that the events in the movie had to happen that way - nobody had any choice in the matter. Events and conversations that don't make sense when you see them become all too clear later in the movie, when it's earlier in time. In addition, showing the revenge before the crime forces the audience to consider the morality of the situation from a different perspective - you literally see how revenge doesn't change anything.
The movie is quite controversial for its two violent scenes - the rape and the revenge. Those two scenes are extremely hard to watch.
Noe is also known for loopy camera work, strobe lighting, and low-frequency noises. This is a diabolically effective way to keep the viewer psychologically uncomfortable and disoriented, which makes the impact of the movie all the more intense.
"Irreversible" is a dark, violent, existentially depressing meditation on vulnerability, rage, and the impossibility of fixing things.
That theme is explicitly stated in "Irreversible", Noe's second film. The plot of this movie is simple: a woman is raped and her boyfriend teams up with her ex-boyfriend to get revenge.
What makes this movie unique is that the sequence of events is shown in reverse order. If you don't recognize that's what's going on, the movie will make absolutely no sense.
We begin at the ending of the story (actually, the movie starts with the end credits), and the final scene is where the story starts. By doing this, the entire theme of the revenge genre is turned on it's head. What would normally be seen as a movie about consequences now becomes a movie more about predestination. You get the impression that the events in the movie had to happen that way - nobody had any choice in the matter. Events and conversations that don't make sense when you see them become all too clear later in the movie, when it's earlier in time. In addition, showing the revenge before the crime forces the audience to consider the morality of the situation from a different perspective - you literally see how revenge doesn't change anything.
The movie is quite controversial for its two violent scenes - the rape and the revenge. Those two scenes are extremely hard to watch.
Noe is also known for loopy camera work, strobe lighting, and low-frequency noises. This is a diabolically effective way to keep the viewer psychologically uncomfortable and disoriented, which makes the impact of the movie all the more intense.
"Irreversible" is a dark, violent, existentially depressing meditation on vulnerability, rage, and the impossibility of fixing things.