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Irreversible
R4 - Australia - Accent Film Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (10th January 2005). |
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The Film
 Irreversible is the second feature film from French filmmaker Gaspar Noe, a director that is certainly no stranger to controversy going back to his short films. His use of graphic violence and disturbing imagery is enough to make some people sick, in fact at the film’s premiere at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival 200 people walked out on Irreversible, disgusted by its brutal and merciless depictions of violence. It’s no doubt that Noe aims to shock, but while he’s shocking you he manages to slip in a few messages of his own into the mix, and it’s up to you whether you want to listen. In Irreversible his message is that time destroys everything, violence begets violence this is a very strong message that is force fed to the viewer with two very horrific scenes in the film, the rape and the revenge. Told in the unconventional reverse-chronological narrative structure made popular by Christopher Nolan’s Memento this editing style keeps the audience guessing as to what happened previously starting with the revenge attack and leading all the way back to the rape and slightly further to a brief glimpse at Alex (Monica Bellucci) and Marcus’ (Vincent Cassel) relationship. The film’s plot is just that, a woman gets raped and her current boyfriend and her ex-lover take matters into their own hands by hiring two criminals to help them find the person that committed the rape to exact revenge. That’s it pure and simple, it’s this simple plot structure combined with the unpleasant violence that drives the point of cause and effect’s destructive nature to the viewer. Violence and shock factor aside, the film itself is wonderfully shot, entirely on hand held camera with 16mm film blown-up to 35mm to give it a gritty first person perspective feel to it, which artistically works for the film in spades as it places you right in the film from the first frame you sense that this is something real. Additionally the performances are extremely realistic, dealing with a situation like this the film would not have been believable had the performances not been so emotionally charged. One element of grave importance was that the dialogue had to feel natural, therefore none of it was actually scripted, when filming began all the cast and crew had was a three-page draft. These elements are a stand out feature of this film, after viewing whether you liked it or not you will not doubt this film’s realistic impact. Whether this film borders on exploitation or art is another thing, this is something you will have to decide for yourself, as is the decision to actually watch this film.
Video
Presented in the film’s original ratio of 2.40:1, this anamorphic transfer is beautiful, the colours are bold and defined, as is sharpness, blacks are present and true as is shadow detail, and feature no low level noise, artefacts, or any print damage. As far as I can tell the transfer is pristine.
Audio
This disc only includes the film’s original soundtrack, French Dolby Digital 5.1, the dialogue is always clear and distortion free as you’d expect from a fairly recent film. The surround channels are occasionally put to good use with fairly balanced ambient surrounds in place. The score is also well mixed and never feels out of place or too overbearing over any dialogue. This is a fine sound mix to accompany an excellent image transfer. Since this film is in French we have subtitles in English only, I found the subtitles to be clear and easy to read with no grammatical mistakes.
Extras
First we have a 7-minute SFX interview, in this piece we have a look at how the fire-extinguisher revenge scene was done, were the guy gets repeatedly bashed in the head. Special effects director Marcus Cassell takes us through how this was done in what was a very disturbingly real scene. Although short this featurette gets to the point rather quickly. Interesting enough, however won’t garner repeated viewing. Following the featurette is a deleted scene, here we see a hospital gurney on a roof with a person’s beaten lifeless body in it. Not sure where in the film this would have come in, a commentary or at the very least an explanation of this scene would have been nice. Next up are a series of two music videos, the first entitled Stress and the second Outrage Finally we also get a series of six teaser trailers and also the film’s original theatrical trailer.
Overall
Irreversible is an uncompromisingly brutal film that attempts to shock its viewers with graphic depictions of rape and violence. I guess you really have to ask yourself whether this is art or exploitation? At the end of the day it will be up to the viewer to decide, but no matter what decision you come to, Gaspar Noe will certainly get his message across that violence begets violence. Accent have given us a superb transfer with very little flaws, accompanied with a great 5.1 soundtrack your home theatre system will almost certainly beg for more. On the flipside the extras are hardly engrossing, other regions are blessed with an audio commentary as well as a short film from the director, these omissions are sorely missed. Otherwise this is a decent enough release and at least Accent had the courage to release this title to Region 4 consumers, for that I applaud them.
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