Reducing Humanity to Rape and Gore

I have two friends in my old home town I keep in touch with on a semi-regular basis. I have very few close friends, but those that are I am grateful to have. One of those friends is into gore flicks; you know - those movies with extreme violence or visual shocks. I can't stomach most of these films. Some of them, like Audition manage to make your skin crawl and feel absolutely sick to your stomach. But then I was told about Irreversible, a truly monstrous piece of work from France (of all places!). Two things you should know about me:


1. I absolutely abhor child molesters. They should all be killed
2. Rape scenes are terrible, horrible images.
3. Pounding a head into hamburger will cause me to puke


This movie contains all three.

 

A man pounds a face in with a fire extinguisher. For two minutes.

Irreversible takes us through a horrendous journey of madness, as one man attempts to revenge the rape of his girlfriend. Only the movie plays in reverse chronological order. It's in the same attempt as Pulp Fiction but with less branching of the story line. It's very effective in delivering a wide ranging and unpredictable plot. In one scene a man's head is literally ground into hamburger paste as another wields a fire extinguisher and kills the rapist. I was cheering during the first four blows, but after that, I didn't see a point to it. But the man continued...for a whole two MINUTES pounding this fucker into the ground. His head was flattened. I ran for the bathroom. The director seemed to be fixated on gay bathhouses, as this movie takes place in a hellhole known as The Rectum. I'm not making that up. I've never seen a movie where a character screams out "Please fist me with two hands". Jesus Christ.

 

Honestly, if I could name a movie I wouldn't ever show ANYONE but my gore-addicted friend...this would be it. It's really that horrendous. But in another vein, I found the cinematography to be very beautiful. The opening credit roll is not only backwards, but reversed like you're looking in a mirror. And the droning sound is almost like the audio mixer reversed the track & fed it back into the movie run. It's incredible.

I haven't finished watching it yet. It's that horrendous evil. I think I'll just start watching Jacob's Ladder again. It's a little more tame.