I Saw "Enter the Void" Two Months Ago

And now I'm going to write about it.

But first, for those who have no idea what I'm talking about: the opening credits. Turn your volume up. Turn off the lights. Fullscreen it.

Abrasive, huh? While the fast-paced, frenetic opening doesn't exactly hold up to the tone and pace of the film (which is slow and dreary), the epileptic noise and light stay regardless, and while the film is extremely difficult to watch, mentally and physically (by the sixth time your left looking straight into what becomes essentially a strobe light for long stretches, you can't help but ask yourself, 'Is this ever going to end?'), Enter the Void is still ambitiously brilliant, flawed, genuinely unique, beautiful and one of the most depressing, despair-filled films I've ever seen.

I guess I should say, before I keep going, that I had already seen Enter the Void a little over a year ago, but it was the shortened version, with twenty--as director Gaspar Noe puts it--unessential minutes cut out, and I definitely needed another viewing to be able to know exactly how I felt about it. My second viewing (which was two months ago, on the other hand, was the directors cut, with the twenty minutes put back in, making the long run time even longer, at a bit under three hours. With it being Noe's preferred version, the director's cut is what I'm responding to.

There's not much to the story of Enter the Void. It's more of an experience of a spiritual journey. Not in any moral, I-have-seen-the-error-of-my-ways way, but a literal, spatial journey, a movement from point A to point B to point C... Oscar, a budding drug dealer has been reading "The Tibeten Book of the Dead" which describes what happens after someone dies: their soul floats around the world and it can see and hear everyone and everything, but can't communicate. It won't pass on because it wants to live again and it keeps getting sucked into certain points of light until those lights become a path to a new life. The soul then chooses which life is best for it, then is reincarnated. So, of course, Oscar dies and we follow him on his spiritual journey into reincarnation.

The best part, the incredibly unique part, of this film is how Oscar's journey is presented. Theoretically, Enter the Void is one shot and in real time. The weird thing is that it spans a couple of weeks (Which I won't explain. Just trust me). Before Oscar dies, the camera is in his point of view, first person. We see exactly what he sees (if you watched the full video above, you saw him blinking). When he dies, the camera becomes his soul and, for most of the film, instead of cutting to different locations, the camera travels to them, always above the going-ons in Tokyo, through neon, fluorescent buildings and across long stretches of streets. It's something I've never seen before and this extremely ambitious way of filming actually works, even though it may make the film drag on longer than it actually is.

While the filmmaking at hand is spectacular, the content bothers me, not on a moral level, but on a spiritual one. As I said before, this is one of the most depressing movies I have ever seen. Near the beginning of the film, when Oscar is learning about the process of death and reincarnation, he asks something along the lines of, "So we're just stuck here?" If so, what does life have to offer? What can we do to make our life the best it can be? What is here that's worth anything? Enter the Void seems to think that there's nothing.

We find nothing through Oscar's voyeuristic point of view that seems redeeming or worth anything. Life is a dirty, sad, frustrating, immoral affair. There's drug overdoses, rape, grief-fueled orgies, abortion, cheap sex, infidelity, inscestual thoughts, murder, abusive relationships, betrayal, and homelessness. Enter the Void is saying that you are born, you suffer, and you die, and then you do it all over again. To further get this extremely nihilistic point across, almost all of the 161 minutes is backed by this echoic drone that sounds like it's coming from inside a deep well and makes everything feel empty and lost. The film even makes sex as despair-filled as the rest of the events. The moans and groans have that same echoic longing as well, and because of that, I couldn't help but picture these characters (and myself) with nothing to strive for in the middle of a pitch black cave with no exit. Life here is meaningless.

What bothers me is that it's this kind of philosophy that possibly underlies all of the character's deplorable actions.  There's no point for caring for others. There's nothing really holding us back. There are no limits in a meaningless world. There are no consequences that can be worse than life itself.

But maybe it's message isn't what completely bothers me, but how I responded to it. Enter the Void makes its nihilistic view actually...attractive and comforting. Maybe it has something to do with the drone. Something about it reminds me of being wrapped under a blanket or maybe subconsciously inside a womb. Maybe it has something to do with the visuals which ,if you have been paying attention to the pictures here, are gorgeous, and that is what I really find so attractive. Or maybe it has to do with the run time. The film feels about an hour too long, and sitting there I become numb and open to what's happening on the screen.  Maybe there's some subliminal messaging--Noe is known to use subliminal tactics before--going on that makes me feel this way.

Whatever the case may be, the fact that I'm left thinking fondly of this movie afterwards, and still thinking about it at all two months later means something. Maybe something dangerous for me. I don't know. It's sucked me in and placed me somewhere where I'm stuck. It's done something to me that I don't understand yet. And that's a scary thing. So, if someone were to ask me if I recommend Enter the Void I would probably say no...but that they should watch it anyway.