Enter the Void.

Some data and triviality, beneficial to both me and the potential reader as a way of organizing my entry points into this movie, a way of demarcating my cinematic tastes, and as a general prelude (skippable as preludes tend to be). A couple months back the Criterion release of Black Orpheus sparked debate in some circles about the merits of the film (helped along by the Criterion supplements themselves), and an interesting component of this conversation was the release year of the film, 1959, and its quality of storytelling and character design as compared to other New Wave films. For example I noticed some people are still enraged about Black Orpheus receiving the Palme d'Or over Truffaut's The 400 Blows. It's an interesting conversation for a number of cine-political reasons, but of course it's completely trivial, because the only person who should decide which film better is you, I mean it's a personal question with internal battlegrounds and exterior debates unconcerned with discussing the films themselves are just farts in the wind. I bring it up because I feel slightly the same way about last year, when The White Ribbon, Un Prophète, Thirst, and Fish Tank were the major winners at Cannes. These are all great films (as I think both The 400 Blows and Black Orpheus are great), but I felt they were safe films, more reflective of the past than progressive or demonstrative of new avenues for exploration. It reminded me, as the Black Orpheus/400 Blows conversation reminded me, that prestige, acclaim, and awards are superficial elements of film studies, illusory in their power and scope. The best films are the films I like the best, and the two films that most excited me that also played at Cannes 2009 are Police, Adjective (winner of Un Certain Regard), and Enter the Void (which just simply premiered to mixed reviews). I've had the opportunity to see Enter the Void three times now, as I write this, and hope to see it at least three more times before it leaves the theater (it must be seen in the theater!). I had planned this past week to write about Tim Burton's Ed Wood with companion discussion of Bela Lugosi in The Raven and The Invisible Ray, and I'd wanted to write about Dial 1119 as well, but once I saw Enter the Void it bulldozed all other thoughts and indeed for the first few days I couldn't even watch other movies (Kings of Pastry was the first movie I saw afterward, a documentary, and Thief of Bagdad was the first narrative, it was like going from the hot tub back into the pool - though I like them both too, I'm just saying that's what it was like). On The Omen blu-ray there's a video in which Richard Donner explains that to him The Omen features extraordinary coincidence and is about Peck's character being driven by these amazing coincidences to the point of insanity where he would harm a child. To me it's more baffling to consider The Omen as a literal story, and it's fascinating to me that Donner would believe in astronomically absurd levels of coincidence before he'd believe in anything even a little spiritual. What I mean is, he's right, The Omen is more interesting as a literal story.

Don't read if you haven't seen.

"'Making a film is difficult, but making a great film is an almost impossible task.'
 
This quote from Spielberg is perhaps not completely accurate, but that’s how I remember it. However, some examples of great films do exist, including the film which had such an influence on my existence: 2001, A Space Odyssey. Without professing to be able to create such a masterpiece, trying to make a film that is, at the same time, a large-scale entertainment, suitable for adults and complex in cinematic terms, is one of the most exciting undertakings one could wish to tackle. And if one does not set out with the aim of making a great film, one can be sure that it will not turn out to be one.

Few of the arts can satisfy man’s need to be uplifted as immediately as film. And none (except interactive video games) can yet reproduce the maelstrom of our states of perception and consciousness. In the past, certain films have tried to adopt the subjective point of view of the main character. enter the void will try to improve upon its predecessors and accompany the hero just as much in his normal state of awareness as in his altered states: the state of alertness, the stream of consciousness, memories, dreams...
 
The visions described in the script are inspired partly by the accounts of people who have had near-death experiences, who describe a tunnel of light, seeing their lives flashing past them and ‘astral’ visions, and partly by similar hallucinatory experiences obtained by consuming DMT, the molecule which the brain sometimes secretes at the moment of death and which, in small doses, enables us to dream at night. The film should sometimes scare the audience, make it cry and, as much as possible, hypnotise it.
 
In recent years, films with labyrinthine structures have proved the audience’s ability to follow storylines in the form of a puzzle, and its desire to move away from linear narration.
But a complex form where the content does not move the spectator in any way would only amount to mathematic virtuosity. Whereas this film is above all a melodrama: the universal melodrama of a young man who, after the brutal death of his parents, promises that he will protect his little sister no matter what and who, sensing that he himself is dying, fights desperately to keep his promise. A film where the life of one person is linked to the love he has for another human being.
 
The reason for choosing the most modern areas of Tokyo as a setting is to further emphasize the fragility of the brother and sister by propelling them like two small balls in a giant pinball machine made up of black, white and fluorescent colours.
 
My previous two films, which were far less ambitious, were once described by a critic as being like roller coasters playing with the most reptilian desires and fears of the spectator. enter the void, whose themes and artistic choices will be far more varied and colourful, should, if I succeed, be the Magic Mountain which I, as a spectator, dream of riding on." Gaspar Noé

Gaspar Noé is an intelligent filmmaker and in interviews avoids injecting the film with mystical or spiritual or other unwarranted meanings. Although I think there's tremendous sub-surface depth to the film, Noe's point must be to keep the focus on the film without exaggerating its already intrinsically melodramatic dimensions. Enter the Void is a simple story, and that's one of the criticisms that has been brought against the movie, although it's clear those were Noé's intentions.

Its simplicity is pronouncedly vast, and Noé sometimes over-amplifies foundational dramatic moments. For example, the death of Oscar, and the subsequent voice message Linda receives. Oscar's death scene is actually a very long sequence (justifiable as the film hinges on this moment). It is also a moment revisited. The voice message scene is a long, long pull out from Linda and the camera first becomes unfocused and then begins to quiver. The scene's monomania and stylistic excesses make it feel like a music video within the movie, but also these two scenes are, in my opinion, excellent rebuttals to the criticism that the film is too simple. Simple in this instance refers to the narrative complexity of the two moments - moments which could be handled more swiftly and efficiently - but the criticism overlooks the emotional complexity of death.

Enter the Void challenges the concept of narrative complexity by challenging the conventional behavior of films and filmmaking, characters and story. This happens in both obvious and subtle ways within the film, and is a source of conflict between interpretations of the narrative after Oscar dies. I accept Noé's declaration that the film isn't about reincarnation, and when I accept this I begin to wonder about the relationship between the first section of the movie and the remainder. The questions that form can only be answered based on how I choose to interpret the characters, their scenes, and their lines. What does it mean that Oscar promises to kill the baby potentially conceived by Mario and Linda's relationship, and especially what does that mean in light of the abortion scene that actually occurs.

I'm not sure, but I experience it regardless, and Enter the Void is very much about the experience of the film (the digital work on the film flat-out amazes me). The experience seems independent of a structural or ideological analysis of the film, firstly, and secondly the efficacy of the narrative seems secondary to the ambition of the filmmaker and the force and range of his vision. This is the effect the movie has on me, and why it's so important to me, because more than in any other movie my feelings are subordinate to the currents and passions of the film, I am superseded by Oscar's experience, and of course it's my opinion that Noé succeeded in his intention to make the most obsessively subjective film yet. It's the strange behavior of the film. The dramatic tradition has always been a sort of bridge between the audience and story, a conversation between the two, a co-dependency, and film has mostly followed this tradition because film has sometimes assumed itself to be the inevitable offspring of plays and novels, but I've always felt this wrong, and Enter the Void is for me the loudest yet voice to declare the unique possibilities of film narratives (there have been other great ones recently, Police Adjective, The Headless Woman, Hunger, Silent Light, the films of Weerasethakul, try to adapt these movies into novels and you'll fail as adaptations of great novels onto the screen fail).

One of the things I always want to do when I rewatch Enter the Void is go out into the streets of Tokyo with my friend Alex (who needs to shower when he sees me, but the poor guy won't be able to shower for days, hiding in alleys and building small fires to stay warm), and one joke I always make with myself is that this time I (Oscar) will stop for a soda from one of Tokyo's beautiful vending machines. Imagine if that happened! The texture of Enter the Void is so rich, so lush, so detailed and specific, that all its major and minor details are important aspects of its experience, and everything that is meaningless or absent in most movies is in the foreground of this movie. This also includes the natural speech patterns of its characters, who say wonderful things but never utter 'lines,' and whom I quote, but my quotes are like "Thanks. (Beat). Thanks thanks." Smaller things too, like the club The Void inside the movie, and its dirty floors.

It's the texture of reality that's so often compromised by dramatic form in cinema. After Oscar's death the film's texture shifts from a direct experience into an indirect, intangible emotional experience. Again, not all answers are given, it's not entirely clear who Oscar and Linda are. In my mind this isn't underdevelopment, this is the actuality of knowing someone. So much life is missing from the screen, but they have missed each other through so much of their actual characters' lives. I wonder about Oscar and how he changes Linda, if he changes her. I picture her at the airport with her stuffed animal and wonder if Oscar corrupts her with drugs and nights at the club, but I don't really know, because I don't really know what she's been doing for so many years. I am able to wonder these things because Enter the Void first establishes the rhythms of reality, and then establishes the rhythms of emotion, and this enables and empowers me as the viewer to ask away, to crawl inside the characters - not their drama; their lives, their personalities.

Some drama, too, though, and I interpret the story as an exploration of the difficult realities of impossible love. I interpret it this way because of the answers I make for the characters, but I don't believe this is how everyone sees the film (I guess it's pretty close to what Noé says in the quote at the top). The abortion scene is a crucial moment in terms of how the audience member receives the film: how the viewer feels about Noé's decision to show it authentically, revisit it through the aborted blood, and also how that abortion meshes with the rest of the film. It's the most difficult scene in the movie and I think if you don't have trouble sorting through your emotional response to the scene you're probably broken inside. I think Noé gives us the highs and gives us the lows, and I admire his courage to show it all, but tell you the truth I take comfort breaks during the abortion scene when I see the movie now, and haven't fully sorted out my own response to the scene.