The Wandrlustr

Enter the Void (2009) - a film by Gaspar Noe

I am going to go out on limb and make the prediction, right now, that this will be the film of the year, as well as the concluding masterpiece of the decade. Why would I be so sure of a film that does not even have a trailer out yet? It is because the filmmaker himself released what I think is the most profound expression of intent I have seen expressed in almost any medium. Without further ado:

“‘Making a film is difficult, but making a great film is an almost impossible task.’ 

This quote from Spielberg is perhaps not completely accurate, but that’s how I remember it. However, some examples of great films do exist, including the film which had such an influence on my existence: 2001, A Space Odyssey. Without professing to be able to create such a masterpiece, trying to make a film that is, at the same time, a large-scale entertainment, suitable for adults and complex in cinematic terms, is one of the most exciting undertakings one could wish to tackle. And if one does not set out with the aim of making a great film, one can be sure that it will not turn out to be one. 

Few of the arts can satisfy man’s need to be uplifted as immediately as film. And none (except interactive video games) can yet reproduce the maelstrom of our states of perception and consciousness. 

In the past, certain films have tried to adopt the subjective point of view of the main character. enter the void will try to improve upon its predecessors and accompany the hero just as much in his normal state of awareness as in his altered states: the state of alertness, the stream of consciousness, memories, dreams… 

The visions described in the script are inspired partly by the accounts of people who have had near-death experiences, who describe a tunnel of light, seeing their lives flashing past them and ‘astral’ visions, and partly by similar hallucinatory experiences obtained by consuming DMT, the molecule which the brain sometimes secretes at the moment of death and which, in small doses, enables us to dream at night. 

The film should sometimes scare the audience, make it cry and, as much as possible, hypnotise it. 

In recent years, films with labyrinthine structures have proved the audience’s ability to follow storylines in the form of a puzzle, and its desire to move away from linear narration. 

But a complex form where the content does not move the spectator in any way would only amount to mathematic virtuosity. Whereas this film is above all a melodrama: the universal melodrama of a young man who, after the brutal death of his parents, promises that he will protect his little sister no matter what and who, sensing that he himself is dying, fights desperately to keep his promise. A film where the life of one person is linked to the love he has for another human being. 

The reason for choosing the most modern areas of Tokyo as a setting is to further emphasize the fragility of the brother and sister by propelling them like two small balls in a giant pinball machine made up of black, white and fluorescent colours. 

My previous two films, which were far less ambitious, were once described by a critic as being like roller coasters playing with the most reptilian desires and fears of the spectator. enter the void, whose themes and artistic choices will be far more varied and colourful, should, if I succeed, be the Magic Mountain which I, as a spectator, dream of riding on.” - Gaspar Noe

All current and pertinent information can be found HERE. 

Sans Soleil - a film by Chris Marker (1983)

“He wrote me that in the suburbs of Tokyo there is a temple consecrated to cats. I wish I could convey to you the simplicity-the lack of affectation-of this couple who had come to place an inscribed wooden slat in the cat cemetery so their cat Tora would be protected. No she wasn’t dead, only run away. But on the day of her death no one would know how to pray for her, how to intercede with death so that he would call her by her right name. So they had to come there, both of them, under the rain, to perform the rite that would repair the web of time where it had been broken.”

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