irreversible. explicit in art or explicit in nature.

the subject of rape can never be taken lightly, and to those who have never experienced such a horrific ordeal..our understanding will always be flawed by the portrayal delivered by someone else's word or image. the question is can you ever truly depict it in its rightful form, and if so, is a naked eye ever truly ready to witness it.

from the moment the title credits began to roll in all its hypnotic glory, i new i was experiencing something i had always strived to find within film. i'm not quite the pervert my film collection may point towards my expectation just always ends in arthouse cinema..fundamentally i'm just a girl who seeks the realism in every moving image and every situation/conversation/characteristic or opinion depicted. after all, i thought film was one person's act of true communication..or so we are taught as film students. but irreversible was something quite different. this was a film that wanted you from the first second to know you had no control, no comfort zone left, no pillow to hide behind, no prior film to compare it to in order to predict your outcome. it was all about taking you somewhere else..somewhere real.

the opening first sequence is like alice falling down the rabbit hole into the darkest corners of your mind, a place where limits and boundaries have no beginning middle or end. it forces you to watch a swirling camera roll around and around the darkened depths of a homosexual bondage club, all the while set against a soundtrack that i have never been able to quite some up into words but the minuet i heard something similar one night on the last tube home..i new that familiar nauseating feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Gaspar Noe presents to the audience the most intense and disturbing rape scene that has been depicted in cinema. not at any stage does the camera cut away, allowing no single audience member the opportunity to avert eyes onto something sweet and comforting, no break in the violence, no soundtrack to dull out the attack, no chance to breathe. this to me was the most powerful thing i had ever experienced as the whole entire time a voice in my head kept reassuring me, 'in a moment it will stop, it has to stop its a film'..but in fact it holds no filmatic convention that would suggest otherwise, this film felt real to all five senses because it didn't follow the codes and conventions we have come to read throughout all genres of film.

a very long time ago in a lecture theatre far far away, i remember a girl describing this film as being, "brutal just to be brutal". i replied as i do now 4 years later..

real life is something that is not pretty. it dose not allow you the pause you need when a situation takes your breath away, life is sometimes shit. there are people walking next to us, sat next to us on tubes and queueing behind us in whsmiths that are capable of the most disgusting things. the reality is when things get to much the camera dose not cutaway until the nightmare ends, its real..
irreversible is a film that is true to its content. he created a film where the dominant ideology ask's you to consider life, and the repercussions of our actions and decisions. after all, in every act of rape..there isnt always jodie foster fighting for justice in a courtroom. that sometimes it is what it is, simply brutal. therefore why should a filmatic depiction then be anything else.

im just not that into you Liam Neeson.

from the moment i first watched 'Taken', the image of liam neeson sporting what i can only assume as claires accessories hair plugs was burnt into my retina's forever.
 why is it a director assumes we as an audience are unaware of the fact their leading male protagonist is 64years old, that a 'wee bit of boot polish' will do the trick. it does not.
so here for 90mins i was subjected to someones grandad on steroids acting hard, obviously we new he meant business when he cracked the phil mitchell leather jacket out..it was all just painful.
well thats until we meet the daughter.
JESUS.CHRIST. she was like a bouncey ball on crack. never once did i see her walk, like she was incapable of doing anything other than licking chupa chups whislst watching snoopy on repeat.

maybe time would be better spent in pre-production building on character and plot development, then on spoon feeding us this basic storytelling bullshit.

schindler's list will always be schindler's list..but the only good thing i can find in Liam Neeson is his voice, so maybe some time spent with marks and spencer advertising their 'dining in for £15'  is the way forward from here.