The next scene takes place in the Rectum, with two men searching for a man named Tenia and then committing a brutal murder, which is filmed in graphic detail. In this sequence we don't just get to watch a murder; we get to see about 50 men having anal and oral sex in a sewer-like atmosphere. When the murder occurs, the gay men watch as if they find it entertaining. Noe's view of gay men resembles Hitler's view of Jews. Not since 1980's "Cruising" have we seen gays depicted as a subhuman race.
In the next sequence, we watch the murderers try to find the Rectum. (They actually shout, "We're going to the Rectum!") Pretty quickly you realize that the scenes are strung together in reverse order.
Eventually we meet Tenia, a gay man, and we learn why the two straight men want to kill him. The infamous rape scene (anal rape of course) is the reason. If you've heard anything about "Irreversible," you've heard about its brutally long and graphic rape scene. What makes the scene so long is that we watch as the rapist struggles to orgasm. He pounds in and out for a long time before he can finally ejaculate. We sit there and watch every one of his pounding moves, for something like 10 minutes. After coming, he beats the woman nearly to death.
Is there a point to all of this? Maybe it's to decry the growing popularity of male homosexuality. I don't know. Noe is such an uninteresting filmmaker that I'm not sure it's even worth it to spend the time trying to figure out what makes him tick. I am generally a fan of extreme approaches to art. I love when artists have the courage to break boundaries and taboos. But there has to be a compelling reason. Extremity for extremity's sake is not art -- it's adolescent silliness. Attacking a minority group could be considered a rationale, but it's not a compelling rationale. It's a loathsome one. It makes Noe appear like the scum in the Rectum.
2 comments:
Wholeheartedly agree with your review. This film is pretentious in the true sense of the word (overblown sense of self-importance). And if that wasn't enough, its depiction of homosexuals is repugnant.
i didn't write about this in the review, but I actually suspect that Noe might be gay himself and just wanted to challenge himself as an artist to explore homophobic ideology. I have absolutely no personal info on him, so this may be completely false. It's just a feeling I get. Maybe that's part of the "reversals" he wanted to explore.
But even if this is the case, it's an experiment that turned out to be completely uninteresting. "Pretentious" to me is totally the right word for this film. And that's a word I rarely use.
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