Gaspar Noe: The Definer of The Perfect Horror

Brandon Melancon 11/29/12

FTCA 4545

Gaspar Noe: The Definer of the Perfect Horror

Through the advancements of technology and capitalism our society has grown "physical freedom-that is, increased leisure time-is bought at the price of spiritual zombieism. The masses, it is said, are offered various forms of easy, false pleasure as a way of keeping them unaware of their own desperate vacuity" (Modleski, 156). One of the best ways to distract the masses from their boring realities is through films. Watching films we tend to forget about our actual reality and take on the film as our present reality if only for a hour and a half. "Movies have long since been considered an entertainment form with few people acknowledging the social and psychological ramifications; yet, movies are designed to direct emotions and entire thought processes, possibly the single largest influence on humans' interpretation of reality--second only to TV" (Keisner, 412-413).

Tania Modleski defines the horror genre as being adversarial to the modernist "specious good" or "bourgeois taste." The postmodernist find pleasure in not just satisfying or enjoyable images, yet find pleasure in feeling any sort of extreme feeling whether it is a joyous or dreadful feeling. Jody Keisner in her essay, "Do You Want to Watch? A Study of the Visual Rhetoric of the Postmodern Horror Film," gives the best description of why people enjoy horror films by saying, "The thrills of viewing horror movies manifest themselves into the accompanying quickened heart rate, agitation, and fight or flight (simulated fear) response that ensues. Horror movies incite emotional and physical responses from the viewer before a rational one." Gaspar Noe has exploited the fundamental methods of creating a horror film to make one of the most disturbing and controversial films of all time, Irreversible. It is the story of rape and revenge shown in twelve segments put in reverse chronological order. Irreversible in all aspects is as "specious evil" as one can get, it focuses on emasculation, disorientation, social paranoia, and suffering or the sickening emotion of physical suffering.

Many film theorist believe that the film industry is male oriented and plays mostly to the ideals of masculinity. From the beginning sequence of Irreversible we see two men sitting practically naked talking about how "time destroys all things." Off the bat we are introduced to two unknown characters that seem to already have been emasculated by their society. Then we, the audience, are thrust into the Rectum, an underground gay sadomasochistic nightclub. Although this scene has many phallic images of erect penises we are dragged through a labyrinth of men having sex with men following close behind the main character, Marcus, searching helplessly for Tenia, the man who raped his fiancé. In an interview with Gaspar Noe we can see his thought process for making such disturbing images by saying, "men don't want to indentify with a character that is being raped by a man" (Apriashvili). Here Noe might even be referring to his infamous nine-minute, no cut, rape scene. One of the most realistic representations of rape ever created. In this scene the cinematography identifies with the female character; while she is being thrown around the camera moves violently with her, and when she is thrown to the ground the camera becomes trapped to the floor as she is. In another interview Gaspar Noe states, "If the camera was excited like the rapist then you're perceiving the scene like the rapist. If the camera is paralyzed to the ground you are more into her state of mind than his state of mind" (Milazzo). These thought processes alone are extraordinarily adversarial to the ideas of the "bourgeois specious good," even the postmodernist can only find pleasure in the deeply disturbing feeling growing inside. "At the moment one is most fixed, most sutured into a sexual position, when one has become the masochistic bottom, when one's full identity is he who is penetrated, one loses identity in the most literal sense: one loses one's identity with oneself" (Brinkema, 9).

Not only do we see and hear very disturbing and emasculating situations, which disorient our rational thought, we are also disoriented by the wild camera movements and cinematography. The main way Gaspar Noe transitions through his scenes in Irreversible are through a series of spinning camera movements; usually spinning in or around a light. These shots are specifically designed to disorient and create a sense of nausea. Gaspar Noe plays to the sense of physical stability by gradually moving towards well-framed stable traditional shots as the plot nears a resolution or peaceful state.

"Over the chronological course of the story, ever more labyrinthine locations, progressively more frantic camerawork, escalating digital manipulation of the frame's boundaries, and more and more pervasively obtrusive film grain all work to emphasize the protagonists' increasingly psychotic states of mind" (Davis, 106).

Throughout most of the film the camera circles and contorts around the characters and the action. Gaspar Noe combines subtle digital effects and camera movements in such extreme ways that the space between character and object, or character and character, becomes obscured. "The spatial disorientation Noe's digital effects conjure mirrors the psychodynamics at the core of Irreversible protagonists' futile attempts to prevent the collapse of their bourgeois universe" (Davis, 106). With the frantic camera motion and the spatial disorientation one can become overwhelmingly disoriented and may insight a physically unpleasant feeling of nausea.

Similarly as agonizing, and compiling with the nausea, Gaspar Noe attacks us with the ultimate villain, our society and ourselves. The inciting incident of the film happens when Monica Bellucci's character, Alex, gets horribly raped and fatally injured. This unprovoked attack seems to be an incident of wrong place, wrong time. A sudden attack as such makes us believe that this can happen to anyone including ourselves. From this we become paranoid that we may be attacked at any moment, any time, and by anyone. "Not merely a carpe diem or memento mori reminding us of the fleeting nature of human health and happiness, it also speaks to the destruction of any illusion of human control over the events in our lives" (Goh, 72). It is true that in our present reality that crime does exist and happens everyday, we generally try to avoid such situations, many people witness them, and some people are victimized by them.