We always use our imaginations when we watch movies. We're accustomed to the time gaps between scenes that spare us the fall of an axe, the consummation of a hot, sweaty kiss or the boring car ride from point A to point B. But Gaspar Noé's "Enter the Void" (2009), now playing at the Kendall Square Cinema, has no mercy on an audience that has been pampered with traditional cinematic cutaways.
The film coaxes and then forces the viewer into a two−and−a−half−hour long experiment. Though it seems at first like gratuitous and unsettling overexposure, it's really just a harsh look at reality.
The film is a simulation of your mind trapped within a drug−induced and beautiful nightmare. Noé's world — and the entire movie — is so visually arresting and unique that you cannot look away.
The story is set in Tokyo and told from the perspective of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American man living with his sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). Oscar begins his night by taking hits of DMT, a powerful hallucinogen. Oscar enters a psychedelic vortex of pulsing fractals and whispers, but his drugged delusions are interrupted by a phone call.
Oscar's journey takes him on an omniscient hovering trip above the physical world, in which he spends most of the time drifting above his sister. Visually, nothing is spared. Oscar sees everything — from his sister having sex to the most traumatic moments of his past. As the film progresses, Oscar explores not only his ability to drift above the physical world, but also his ability to momentarily enter the perspectives of others or of inanimate objects.
It's rare that a filmmaker can pull off an entire movie shot from the point of view of one character without giving audiences a trite and over−indulgent experience. "Enter the Void" achieves this seamlessly with clever and innovative camera work. Noé mixes computer−generated imagery with an organic flow to the cinematography that perfectly mimics a point−of−view vantage. The only soundtrack that exists is the haunting muttering of city chatter.
The film is captivating for reasons beyond sex appeal, drugs and violence. In fact, the surrealism of experiencing Oscar's viewpoint as he floats above the physical world definitely makes the sex unsexy, the violence horrifying but not excessive and the drugged−out experience decidedly not fun.
Instead, when one explores a lived experience through the perspective of a mute, powerless, all−seeing entity, one is able to scrutinize the human condition without accompanying moral ideals and lessons that usually trail all endings of movies.
At two−and−a−half hours, "Enter the Void" is definitely a test of endurance. The characters live in dramatic and tragic conditions, and perpetually engage in unhealthy behavior. For Noé, nothing is enough unless it is too much.
This isn't a film for the faint of heart, nor for an audience unwilling to be wholly consumed by a cinematic experience. It will make you cringe with horror, seduce you into staying glued to the screen, get you to laugh a bit and then send your heart racing again. It's exhausting and uncomfortable, kind of depressing and yet unemotional. Critics will undoubtedly point out how difficult it is to root for the main characters or the film's exploitative indulgence in sex and violence. Regardless, it is difficult to deny that "Enter the Void" is a visual masterpiece and unrelenting in its grip on the viewer's attention.
