The phrase “they don’t make movies like that anymore” is an apt description of Gaspar Noe’s psychedelic epic Enter The Void. When was the last time a movie directed by a major film maker was created with the sole intention of blowing your mind, not merely with special effects but with grand metaphysical aspirations?  In attempting to replicate what he imagines as being the stages the soul passes through after bodily death, Noe has created a magnificent head trip that recalls the visual scope and poetry of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the pataphysical leaps of spiritual fantasy that infuse the similarly lysergic El Topo. The fact that Noe had cutting edge digital technology at his disposal and knows how to use it makes Enter The Void not only a provocative intellectual experience but a ravishingly visual one as well.  But it must it must be seen on the big screen…uncut.

Noe has experimented with psychoactive substances since he was a teenager. More recently, he went to Peru to experiment with Ayahuasca. The psychedelic experience not only informs Enter The Void, it IS Enter The Void. The subject of the film is the film. Noe understands what few contemporary movie directors understand: film is chemical with the potential of being alchemical. Of all forms of art, film can best approximate dreaming or visionary states of consciousness. Enter The Void aspires to nothing less than altering your brain chemistry. And as much as a movie can, it succeeds. I staggered out of a screening of Enter The Void like someone coming down from an extended DMT trip. It took me a few minutes to orient myself well enough to drive my car. And other than seeing the film, I hadn’t had anything stronger than one glass of wine. I noticed that groups of people leaving the film seemed likewise in a daze, many of them laughing giddily like stoned freaks.

Enter The Void is not perfect. It is repetitive at times and probably 20 minutes too long (though I was never bored). Noe claims 2001 as an influence and like that film the performances in Void are often stiff and unconvincing. But the acting is hardly the centerpiece of Noe’s film. Afterall, the main character is a disembodied spirit.

Noe goes for sensation over narrative rigor. He loves constructing lavish and lurid spectacles that are charged with sex and and shot from weirdly skewed perspectives. It’s not all tryptamine, there’s opium in there too. And like another one of his heroes, Kenneth Anger, Noe likes to play with the dark side. For all of its soulful yearning, the movie has scenes of transgression and horror (a gutwrenching car wreck) every bit as disturbing as Noe’s Irreversible and I Stand Alone - two films that on the surface are profane, but at heart deeply religious.

Enter The Void is haunted by the ghosts of the dead and the living dead. In its depiction of the afterlife as just another dimension of this life, the movie blurs the distinctions between living and dying. Throughout the film there are references to the “Tibetan Book Of The Dead” (almost comically so) and it seems that Noe is passing through his own Bardo planes as an artist, traveling through darkness to get to light. Noe explores the idea of the soul in transition like a man possessed. There is a sense of spiritual urgency in Enter The Void that recalls the beatitudes of a Carl Dreyer’s The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. Only this time it’s day-glo.

In my reverie over Enter The Void, I’ve failed to discuss the amazing technical accomplishments of the film. Put simply: the film is a visual marvel unlike anything I’ve ever seen…on a screen. The camera is in constant motion, following the action from every perspective imaginable, from heaven above to inside the womb. There’s a jawdropping shot of a penis from the point of view of the interior of a woman’s vagina. I laughed to myself imagining what it would have looked like in 3D. The wet neon of Tokyo at night is gorgeously shot by Benoît Debie. Color, lighting and set design blend in an orgy of eye candy that makes most Hollywood films look like they were shot a century ago using cameras powered by steam. With shuddering surround sound, the whole experience is like being immersed in a hot tub full of peyote tea. 

Gaspar Noe wants to fuck you in the head until your brain cums and in Enter The Void he gets some long strokes in.

Enter The Void is being released on DVD and Blu-ray January 25. I strongly recommend you see it on the big screen. But if that’s not possible, you can buy it here. There are several cuts of the film that have been released. It appears that the DVD is the 160 minute version I saw. At this time, that’s the definitive version.

Update: The 160 minute cut of Enter The Void will have its first theatrical run in New York City at the IFC Center from January 14 through January 20. The film will also play at The Landmark Nuart Theater in Los Angeles on January 21 for a special midnight showing.
 

 
Enter The Void.

Rabbit Hole
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True Grit
The Coen Brothers, working from Charles Portis’s boisterous novel rather than the Hollywood film of the 1960s, concoct one of the best westerns since McCabe And Mrs. Miller. Cornpone Shakespearean dialogue, sweeping widescreen cinematography by Roger Deakins and performances as pungent as smoked ham hocks from Jeff Bridges, Mark Damon, Barry Pepper and Haile Steinfield fuse into a beautifully ragged cowboy fairytale. The star-filled nightscape and Disney-like aura of the film’s final 20 minutes plays like a sly homage to True Grit producer Steven Spielberg.

Black Swan
Dario Argento meets The Red Shoes in Darren Aronofsky’s deliciously lurid B-movie in art film drag.

True Legend
A morality play with grand emotions and epic action, True Legend engages the heart while being breathtakingly thrilling.  Just when you thought Asian action flicks had lost their mojo, martial arts maestro Yuen Woo Ping resurrects the genre once again.

Solitary Man
See it for Michael Douglas’s squirm-inducing performance as a creepy poonhound in a perpetual state of mid-life crisis.

The Fighter
Shapeshifter Christian Bale is the most magnetic actor on the planet. Melissa Leo matches him every step of the way in this wildly entertaining study of a fucked up family whose day to day existence is as brutal outside the boxing ring as it is inside.

Let Me In
This American remake of Swedish art/horror film Let The Right One In was unfortunately ignored by the movie going public. Too bad. It’s terrific. A rare instance in which a remake is as good, if not better, than the original. Let Me In contains the single most dazzling scene of 2010. It involves a car crash. See it and you’ll understand.

Kick-Ass
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The tenth slot has been left open for the film from 2010 I have yet to see.