(2009) France Gaspar Noé
2009 was the year I graduated high-school and the year where I got the independence I had been seeking and all of the weight of responsibility was not lost on my fragile ego. The gravity of my decisions from that point onward bared the weight of the repercussions it provoked. Enter the Void by Gaspar Noé evokes the same response in me that I had back then. We are dealing with life and it's counterpart death on a constant daily basis but life's biggest question: What happens after we die? remains unanswered and arcane. We've had several theories but only the Tibetans and the Egyptians ever thought to make us a guidebook through that in-between-lives state.
Gaspar Noé brilliantly takes on the challenge of modernizing The Tibetan Book of the Dead and for all it's worth, he does it pretty well. I do say there are some compromises that perhaps were made for the sake of maintaining a storyline but I want to see the Director's cut where we can see Noé in full creative license. I want the Noé/Malick version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, meaning that I want all of the colors/music/atmosphere of Noé with the ballsy and challenging storytelling of Malick. In my book though, Noé gets points for just showing up. While the story might be already out-of-this-world for someone who isn't familiar with the territory but for someone who is I saw that there's some room for improvement.
What ENTER THE VOID does right is it's brilliance and this is perhaps most seen through the 1st person perspective POV. We are forced to identify with Oscar (Nathanial Brown) and coming from a female space, let me tell you what a MINDFUCK that was. One of the prime tenets of the American Book of the Dead written by guru E.J. Gold is the concept of the voidness which is where our true potential lies. If you don't know what I mean..... Good. All joking aside, this is sincerely a masterpiece and one that gives credence to life's biggest debacle. Like artist Alex (Cyril Roy) there are people who seriously study these ancient texts for answers that can't be found in store, and I believe that Alex was a self portrait of Noé to his audience.
As I am part of a group that studies these things I have access to not only the texts but people capable of explaining them to me. We see Oscar walking down the stairs in one scene, Alex warns him to read the book of the dead and that it would do Oscar so much better than DMT, little did the audience know it was a spooky foreshadowing to how serious Alex's choices were tonight.
But I digress, what I was saying was that as part of a group that studies the BOTD we are given exercises to determine which state of being were are in at the moment. For this particular week we were to watch a film in a cinema and observe the people becoming identified with the story, without using any condescension, we were to notice that although the film had been recorded months or a year before that the audience were imagining it in real time, after a while you were allowed to suspend your own disbelief to follow the movie, but still trying to catch yourself before disassociating. Finally we were to leave without seeing the ending. Let me tell you not staying to the end was HARD.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead talks about the colors that pull us through the different dimensions in a period between lives where we are essentially judged for our karma of our previous lifetime. Imagine Defending Your Life but scarier and A LOT more abstract. Alex tells Oscar that because most people can't handle it, they experience a "bad trip" and therefore get an almost immediate rebirth depending on their karma. The Tibetans believed that studying it can help you prepare for that labyrinth and that through training of your will during your lifetime we can progress through the bardos in a semi decent way. Oscar is so woefully unprepared for the bardos that mostly his in between lives state made for a really punishing portrayal of a young man's tragic luck all of which resulted in yet another lower dimensional birth; first choosing his own sister and then looking for a hooker in the Love Hotel for his future mommy dearest.
One thing that I loved about ENTER THE VOID was that as the movie progressed the set looked more and more like a model and less like gritty neon Tokyo. I was confused when I saw Alex step out of what I WAS SURE was a toy or model car but at the same time I was freaking out because it was so brilliant. There is no way we can perceive whatever is on the other side of the veil but I bet you dollars to donuts that it makes whatever we are doing over here seem pretty damn small. BOTD exercise seemed so totally spooky at that point of the night and I decided enough was probably enough and that I had enough already to write a blog on.
So I didn't go to the cinema and watch others watching it but I still could since it's playing at the Metrograph. In fact, I think I will. Maybe I do things a little backwards sometimes, but I always end up ahead, guess that's a good habit to have in the bardos, right?
Magritte pretty much summed it up in 1929 with La Trahison des images that I got to see at LACMA in Beverly Hills, CA.
He's my favorite. Oh... Where would we be without art?
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