ENTER THE VOID

it’s easy to see why critics want to give gaspar noe so much credit. i stand alone and irreversible are something of a guilty pleasure for the cinema literate, all visual stimulation and taboo smashing. in his three feature films, noe commands an intensely hallucinogenic visual sensibility to grab the viewer, using computer generated imagery to execute impossible camera moves and depict explicit and gruesome situations. packed in with this aesthetic is a puckish sense of humor and a delight in reveling in obscenity. his style and personality are reminiscent of other well-regarded, roguish european directors like lars von trier, michael haneke and paul verhofen. this combination seems to make noe something like a thinking man’s exploitation film director who trades in artfully made confrontational viscerality. to some this is bold and challenging, to others, stunted adolescent posturing. whichever way your tastes lie, this artistic temperament makes noe’s work seem youthful and energetic, untrammeled by conservative squeamishness.

viewing this film at the ifc center in the west village was more or less ideal. the intimate screening rooms in particular make for an experience evocative of a gentrified porno theatre, which presumably would be perfectly apropos for enter the void. overall, the venue completely contributes to the audiovisual effect and greatly enhances the psychedelia. this movie that promises the thrills of shock, horror and vulgarity that you might expect from a seedy little theatre, but much like the venue itself, it’s buffed to a sheen, calculatedly cozy and completely safe. this doesn’t damn enter the void so much as hold it back, for a film that threatens so often to explode into synaesthesia, it never really does.  the hallucinatory aesthetic then comes across as a false front, candy to satiate the audience while the story turns ever toward Meaning.

the capital-m meaning is Melodrama of a decidedly freudian bent, using the six bardo of tibetan buddhism as a framing device and narrative framework. since the use of freudian psychoanalysis and tibetan thanatology is so facile and obvious, it’s helpful to view it as exploratory rather than critical. just the fact alone that the tibetan book of the dead recurs as a motif is suggestive of noe’s intent to use that text as a decoder ring for the ultimate mystery of the film. this is a particular kind of bone-headed literal-mindedness that makes films like inception maddeningly expository and ultimately laughable. this is far from suggesting that obscurity or opacity are inherently more meaningful traits, but that the tendency to over-explain is abuses the wonderful gift of figuration, either with visuals or language. purely as a visual spectacle, enter the void lacks a dimension of abstraction that truly makes it feel “out of body”.

instead it stubbornly commits to a series of recurring shots that are less disorienting and more familiarizing, which makes the experience seem disappointingly to-the-letter. opting for a third person videogame style couched camera at critical plot points is another one of these cinematic tropes that seems novel and becomes wearying as the film goes on. when the protagonist, oscar, enters the liminal life-death state (hypothesized by a mentor character to be “the ultimate high”) that experience is considerably less hallucinogenic than a drug trip, which is nonsensical. oscar’s experience is hellish to be sure, but not transcendentally hellish, it’s a very mundane hell spiced up with throbbing bass and neon outlines. the ghostly, spiraling, fincher-style overhead shots are similarly used to ill effect; often turning the sensation of a wandering spirit to a mere fly on the wall, ferrying back and forth across shinjuku town as though purgatory had its own personal chauffeur.

there are powerful moments, though, mostly using the use of sound and strobe lighting. the scene that takes place during the fifth bardo in the love hotel is jaw-dropping and perhaps noe’s most masterful use of his own aesthetic to realize the thogal visions. noe depicts this phase with an energy and relish only hinted at earlier, as an erotic tableaux entirely bathed in pulsing fluorescence. here the voyeurism of the protagonists intermediate state is at its sensory zenith as he ultimately experiences consummation of his freudian longing for his sister/mother figure. this tantric redemption is made possible by the filmmaker deftly depicting the unusual bond between the two siblings in flashbacks that connect sex with death and reconciliation of the two with incestuous longing. these elements are conveyed especially well by the sister character, linda, played in the present as spacey and carnal and in the past as terrifyingly hysterical. the characterization of linda admittedly mitigates a great deal of the straightforwardness of this film, being just unusual enough to complement the trippiness of the experience.

ultimately this is frustrating because from an acclaimed non-studio director, you expect a certain amount of abstruseness – not just to pat the audience on the head for being perceptive but also to delve beyond what needs exacting explanation. a sensory experience doesn’t beggar exposition. bogging itself down with unambiguous particulars is how the film threatens to run aground. without the need to explain every little plot movement, the incongruous interplay between a psychotropic buddhist death-cycle and requiem for a dream-style melodramatic morality play could be highly entertaining. without hanging glittering signs on every motif and theme, the visuals could fulfill the promise of freeing the film from such a limiting and vacuous narrative. noe has a ways to go, even as a gussied-up exploitation film director.

the most stimulating thing in the film is the opening credits. not impotent, but not potent, either. two and a half stars.