Irreversible (film)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Irreversible
Original title Irreversible
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2002
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Gaspar Noé
script Gaspar Noé
production Christophe Rossignon
music Thomas Bangalter
camera Benoît Debie
cut Gaspar Noé
occupation

Irreversibel is a French film directed by Gaspar Noé from 2002.

action

Note: Due to the mixing of chronologically backwards and forwards connected (linear) scenes, the chain of events in the film deviates from the one shown here.

The main characters are Alex, her current boyfriend, Marcus, and Alex's ex-boyfriend, Pierre. Alex found out she was pregnant but has not yet told her two friends about it. The three want to celebrate, but after an argument with Marcus, Alex leaves the party. On her way home she is attacked in a pedestrian underpass by a stranger who rapes her anally and beats her brutally. When Marcus and Pierre later turn up at the scene of the incident, where an ambulance is taking away Alex, who has been battered to the point of coma, the two investigate on their own. After finding out the name and whereabouts of the stranger (the "Rectum", a gay nightclub), they break in to seek revenge on the rapist. A scuffle ensues that ends with Pierre killing the alleged perpetrator with a fire extinguisher while the actual perpetrator watches the scene with amusement.

Stylistic devices

The film plot runs in reverse chronology and begins with the murder of the alleged rapist described last.

Irreversible is often compared to Memento (2000), as both films plot the story in reverse chronology. For the first time in a film, David Hugh Jones used this narrative stylistic device in 1983 in Cheating with Jeremy Irons , based on the play of the same name by Harold Pinter . The plot is reversed in the much more delicate marriage drama 5 × 2 - Five times two (2004) by François Ozon .

Irreversible begins with the credits, the text of which runs backwards. The opening sequence shows two men storming into a bizarre nightclub for homosexuals with sadomasochistic tendencies. The picture is hectic and blurred so that you can hardly make out details. Immediately afterwards follows the scene that took place chronologically right before the club visit - and gradually the plot is rolled up towards the actual beginning.

The individual scenes are apparently shot without an intermediate cut. At the beginning, the camera work in restless drives and pans symbolizes the anger of the main character Marcus, who is out for revenge against his girlfriend's rapist. As the action progresses (here actually: backwards), the camera becomes noticeably calmer.

Reviews

“[The film] is exhausted in delirious and voyeuristic images. Beyond the excessively described violence, a feeling of emptiness remains. "

- epd film , 9/2003

“Action veteran Samuel Fuller once said that you have to shoot a machine gun from the screen to hit the audience. Never before has this requirement been so catastrophically misinterpreted by a filmmaker. "

- Andreas Busche : taz

“In contrast to conventional narrative cinema,“ Irreversible ”focuses more on the narrative. The how is more important than the what . The real theme is not the story of the protagonists, it is the inversion of time and existence, destruction and life. Neither the dialogues nor the characters are drawn in detail. They are images of the everyday. With his representations, Noé primarily aims at the senses of the viewer and thus inevitably stimulates thought. "Irreversible" is tantamount to a deep blow in the stomach of mainstream cinema: radical, loud and extremely uncomfortable ... "

- Matthias Ball : film starts

“Noé's film is by no means without quality, but dramaturgically highly interesting and brilliantly played throughout. It also gives food for thought about predestination, fate and supposed security. And so 'Irreversible' could have been a masterpiece without the hair-raising violence - perhaps it would then have lacked the explosiveness that only triggers a social debate. Conclusion: An uncomfortable hybrid of fascinating picture meditation and unbearable provocation. "

- Cinema

"" Irreversible "is rumored to be a film that runs from back to front and at the center of which is a nine-minute rape scene of rarely seen brutality. This perception shortens the film in an unjust way: In fact, it is both an extremely drastic, but serious commentary on cinematic dramaturgy and a thoroughly morally founded statement on the phenomenology of interpersonal violence. "

- Lexicon of international film

Audience reaction

Even the revenge scene at the beginning of the film contained too much explicitly shown violence for many moviegoers. At the premiere in Cannes, some critics left the cinema after a short time. In addition, the “camera roller coaster ride” in the nightclub scene caused nausea in some viewers. The audience, unprepared at the premiere, reacted with stunned indignation or disgust to the extremely long and seemingly realistic sequence in which Alex is brutally raped and mistreated until he was unconscious. Out of 2,400 viewers, around 200 left the cinema prematurely, others protested with loud heckling. The US magazine Newsweek irreversibly awarded the title “ most walked-out-of movie of the year ”. Supporters of the film counter that the depiction of violence is fundamental to the story and that it is what gives the film its credibility.

Awards

Irreversibel was awarded the bronze horse at the Stockholm Film Festival and competed for the Palme d' Or in Cannes in 2002 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for irreversible . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2003 (PDF; test number: 94 976 K).
  2. ↑ epd Film No. 9/2003, Joint Work of Evangelical Journalism, Frankfurt aM, pp. 34–35.
  3. ^ Andreas Busche: Irreversible. Retrieved on July 13, 2008 (from Filmzentrale).
  4. ↑ a b Matthias Ball: Irreversible. Retrieved July 13, 2008 (at film releases).
  5. ^ Film review. Cinema.de
  6. ↑ irreversible. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 7, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ^ Cinematic fall from hell: "Irreversibel" , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of Tuesday, September 9, 2003
  8. Jump up ↑ Top 25 Most Horrifying Movies of All Time , movie releases , November 20, 2015
  9. ↑ Nominations and Awards in the Internet Movie Database