Irreversible: straight cut

Irreversible: straight cut
Picture: Altered Innocence

Drama in French by Gaspar Noé in 2002 Irreversible is one of those movies that consistently appears on many critics’ “Best Movies You Never Want To See Again” lists. No matter where you stand, it’s no easy task – even Noah’s biggest advocates will admit that he likes to provoke with deliberate ugliness. (Irreversible not only contains a 9-minute rape scene, but characters displaying racist, homophobic, transphobic and pedophile tendencies.) Like Memento, the original film plays its scenes, most of which appear as single takes, in reverse order. The action begins with a maelstrom of violence in an underground sex club. As the story continues backwards, we learn that the violence is the reward for a brutal rape and assault that happened earlier; Going back even further, we live the life of a couple in love before all the violence took place. In the new reissued and restored Irreversible: straight cut, the story is now told in chronological order, which mostly reveals that all men are awful. At least in this story.

It seems unlikely that a spectator will come to see either of the Irreversible unaware that it is sadly centered on a brutal rape. So whichever direction one looks at it, the shadow of the act looms over everything, providing an earth-shattering inevitability en route to revelation. In reverse order, first we see the violence that rape causes, then we wonder how these aggressive men got there, then we learn about their motivation, then we feel sad seeing how bad things were. good before all this happens. But once the timeline becomes linear, everything is relative.

Originally, the idyllic scenes with Alex (Monica Bellucci) and Marcus (Vincent Cassel) played after the rape. In the recut, the story begins with them, so a different picture emerges, starting with Marcus playfully ignoring Alex’s many pleas to stop doing things she finds annoying, like stealing money from him. money to buy alcohol for a party. She doesn’t indicate that she minds – she comes across as quite adept at dealing with insecure male egos – but for this new version of the story, it’s now the start of a slippery slope.

Alex and Marcus are in a strange friendship triangle with Pierre (Albert Dupontel), who was dating Alex, while Marcus, although passionate about Alex, still wants to do cocaine and kiss other girls in the bathroom . As the pair try to block each other out, Alex leaves them both at a party to get home early, leading to the movie’s most infamous scene.

At the start of this cut, Marcus makes a comment about stealing from Pierre’s daughter. Alex corrects her language: she is not an object to be stolen; she made her own decision, thank you. But once assaulted, she becomes a transactional object for everyone – for the cops, for local gangs willing to name the rapist for pay, and even for Marcus and Pierre, who would rather inflict violence on the assailant than sit near Alex’s hospital bed. In the cut in reverse order, it might have taken a second viewing to realize that the man beaten to death in revenge is not the rapist known as Tapeworm, but rather his friend. The Tapeworm (Jo Prestia) gets away with it without scotch, which is immediately clear this way, and underscores the complete pointlessness of the violence and hatred that Marcus and Pierre indulge in.

Pierre offers Marcus one last lifeline before they take that fateful step into the dark and disorienting sex club called The Rectum – he suggests they go see Alex in the hospital, and Marcus responds by smashing the car in. which he stands with a metal bar. From there, it is Pierre who loses all control. Resentful for his unsatisfying sex life with Alex – which was mostly his fault – he unloads with every ounce of frustration he has accumulated on the man he believes to be the Tapeworm, an anger that has been ignited by the sparks of rage. and revenge.

Noah is not wrong to suggest that Irreversible: straight cut is a different, even revelatory film from the original, though it is still able to leave a viewer shaken despite knowing what is to come. For a movie known for being the one you never want to see again, its director has created a compelling reason to watch it again. Rape and beatings remain horrific, while bigotry and insults have aged badly. Ever the provocative, Noah probably doesn’t care if you think the hate is his rather than his characters’, but he signals even more clearly here that the protagonists you thought were good – at least in their intent – don’t. are actually not. Not everyone is ready for such a nihilistic worldview. But you could say it explains a lot about toxic masculinity today.

(Irreversible: straight cut opens in theaters February 10)