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Irreversible But Forwards Instead Of Backwards

Started by DukeDeMondo, September 11, 2019, 05:52:44 PM

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DukeDeMondo

There's no end to it. Gaspar Noe. Thrown together a version of Irreversible with everything running in the right order, next. All stuff going forwards instead of backwards, A B C where C B A used to be the time of day. The Straight Cut, he's calling it, fittingly enough. The Straight Cut. One of the most ferociously homophobic films that anyone's ever seen. Straighter now than ever.

Still, it's incredible, Irreversible. Is. Affected me like nothing I've seen before or since. I remember sitting in front the telly the first time I tried to watch it, trembling and sick to my soul before I knew what the fuck way was up or down. Eyeballs boaking in their sockets. Had to turn it off after twenty minutes. Took it back for a refund.

I ended up buying it again a week later. Phenomenal fucking film.

Who the fuck wants to see it with all the scenes in the right order? They were in the right order to begin with. He says he's done it because we've all missed the point of it.

They did it with Memento too, didn't they? Easter egg or something on the DVD. Waste of time.

Reversible, after all. 

Puce Moment

I find it hard to criticise either the film or the director purely based on that final scene, with Beethoven's soaring 7th played over a clearly happy, satisfied, pregnant Bellucci, with that disorientating god angle camera-work. It's one of my favourite endings to a film, and simply loses all its power and potency if placed first.

This version is just going to play out like a shitty, slightly oblique revenge film, which for me is undermined in the original due to its structure.

I love the opening credits to Enter the Void as well, and I'm so glad he didn't leave that to the end.

DukeDeMondo

Quote from: Puce Moment on September 11, 2019, 07:16:02 PM
I find it hard to criticise either the film or the director purely based on that final scene, with Beethoven's soaring 7th played over a clearly happy, satisfied, pregnant Bellucci, with that disorientating god angle camera-work. It's one of my favourite endings to a film, and simply loses all its power and potency if placed first.

This version is just going to play out like a shitty, slightly oblique revenge film, which for me is undermined in the original due to its structure.

I love the opening credits to Enter the Void as well, and I'm so glad he didn't leave that to the end.

Oh the opening credits to ETV are fantastic. So good that Kanye ended up nicking them for the All Of The Lights video. Fantastic there too.

I agree with everything else as well. That last scene is perfect and would lose so much if it was stuck at the start. The whole thing would lose so much. It's a terrible idea, this "Straight Cut" carry on.

neveragain

Purely from a technical point of view, it's interesting to see how the films flow in their chronological form, and work out why the originals worked so well.

peanutbutter

I'd go see the original version in cinema, wouldn't go near a chronological one. Although I think he might be right to say the general audience didn't get it and being stubborn enough to release a seriously compromised altered version to prove that is pretty ballsy


Junglist

Only two films I've seen that affected me more are Michael and Miss Violence, which are an outstanding films but I cannot recommend them to anyone.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1906426/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3078242/

BlodwynPig

Baise moi is another but is tepid compared to Irreversible. Cinema emptying at a rate of knots.

Head Gardener



Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Quote from: BlodwynPig on September 13, 2019, 07:48:10 AM
Baise moi is another but is tepid compared to Irreversible. Cinema emptying at a rate of knots.

Baise Moi is a rubbish film by any standards, dropping any flimsy pretence of being anything other than a grot flick about one third of the way through. One of the main stars of it committed suicide out of sheer embarrassment at appearing in the fucking thing (probably).

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: peanutbutter on September 12, 2019, 11:34:40 PMAlthough I think he might be right to say the general audience didn't get it and being stubborn enough to release a seriously compromised altered version to prove that is pretty ballsy

Is he, though?  It seems pretty well-revered among more casual film fans, and probably makes it into a bunch of lists of "Most [ ] film ever".  There's no amount of editing or re-arranging he could do to the thing that'd make it appeal to "the general audience" he seems to be talking about, and why would he want it to appeal to them anyway?  It was deliberately designed to be alienating and shocking and "the movie they didn't want you to see" - that's how he sold it!  Something properly disingenuous about all of that, but then again there's nothing particularly (in)genuous about anything he's ever said.

Quote"Why this film? Because the original was told backwards and many viewers, swamped by the anticlockwise structure of the editing, didn't understand certain aspects of the story," Noé said.

Erm ... really?  I've never once heard of anyone being confused by it, nor can I imagine how they could be.  It's basically about 10 long scenes, told in reverse.  I don't think it's as complex as he thinks it is.  Memento is more complicated.

Quote"Presented clockwise, everything is clear and also darker."

This makes me think he doesn't understand his own fucking film.  The reason the ending of Irréversible is so effective is purely because of the dramatic irony - knowing just how horribly this happy(ish) couple's lives are going to be destroyed.  It's seeing their happiness, contentment and hope juxtaposed against an unspeakably brutal future that they have no reason to expect.  For that reason, it feels a lot "darker" than it would if it were told chronologically - a grim yet fairly standard rape-revenge-type thriller with some clever camerawork.  I mean, presumably there's a good reason he chose to write it that way in the first place, it's very deliberately told that way (cinematically, thematically, everywayly).  "Time destroys everything" - yes!

Ah, it's not worth my time.  Climax was fucking gash and all.