Enter the Void

[DarkImbecile]

Eight years after the controversial and shocking Irreversible, director Gaspar Noé cemented his reputation as the enfant terrible of New French Extremity with perhaps his most challenging film to date – a hallucinatory meditation on life, death and rebirth, shot entirely in the first person.

American siblings Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) and Linda (Paz de la Huerta, The Limits of Control) eke out a shared existence in Tokyo – he by dealing drugs, she by working as a stripper. However, tragedy strikes when a deal turns sour and Oscar is shot by the police. As his lifeless body lies on the floor of a public toilet, his soul floats high above the neon-drenched Tokyo streets, observing the effect of his death on his sister and reliving the events in his life that brought him to this juncture.

Described by Noé himself as a “psychedelic melodrama”, Enter the Void boasts mesmerising cinematography by the award-winning Benoît Debie (Climax, Spring Breakers) and a hypnotic soundtrack of experimental and electronic music. Powerful and transcendent, it offers viewers an immersive cinematic experience like no other.

Product Features

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentations of both the 143-minute UK theatrical cut and the full-length 161-minute director’s cut
• Original lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and PCM 2.0 stereo soundtracks
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Enter the Sensorium, a brand new visual essay on the film by author and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicolas
• Brand new video interview with typography designer and long-term Noé collaborator Tom Kan
• 8 deleted scenes
• Archival Making of – Special Effects featurette
• Archival Vortex featurette
• Archival DMT Loop featurette
• French and international theatrical trailers
• 8 teaser trailers
• 3 unused trailers
• Image gallery
• Limited edition packaging with reversible sleeve featuring two choices of artwork
• Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Jon Towlson and Rich Johnson, and an oral history of the film by Steven Hanley
• Fold-out double-sided poster featuring two choices of artwork
• Six double-sided, postcard-sized artcards

[colinr0380]

I'm a little disappointed that this isn't a UHD, since that would be immediate grounds for upgrading my US Blu-ray. Although maybe the impact of these hyper-gaudy visuals in a 4K version would just be too overwhelming! But the extras look good (particularly glad to see what I am assuming is the BUF special effects reel (NSFW) for the film that they had on their website make it onto disc. I still contend that eight minute piece is perhaps the most tolerable version of the film!), and from our previous discussion on the Irreversible thread it appears that this may be the film's Blu-ray debut and the first release of the director's cut in the UK.

Something that the comment about Oscar "reliving the events in his life that brought him to this juncture" in Arrow's write up made me think about is that one of the more fascinating things about this film that might reward repeat viewings is the way that the second half of the film does that shift in techniques to deal with presenting Oscar reliving all of the various stages of his life. In the just post-death first half of the film he is a disembodied spirit flying back and forth through the city, dealing with events in the moment as Oscar seems to be trying to stay connected with all the people in his life as they deal with his death. This is all first person, as was the pre-death scene (including drug trip) just before. But once we get into Oscar reliving his entire life story through his memories we get that interesting shift in both perspective and technique as we get into a long series of tableau shots (somewhat anticipating Love) from behind the silhouette of Oscar's head that also exist as discreet scenes with edits to black in between them before a cut to another memory, as if he is at a further remove from his direct experience that suggests that he (finally!) may be beginning to be able to view himself outside of his directly impactful experience of events in the moment. Or rather his direct experience is now as another being, as his previous personality is sloughed away. So ironically in a way we are seeing Oscar both at his most liberated and omniscient as his sense of ego and obligations and memories tying him down get systematically presented and stripped away, until he (spoiler)

SpoilerShow

ends up trapped back inside another body to presumably repeat the cycle all over again, just with minor differences this time around!