Watched Irreversible today on DVD and we've found the newest winner in "the most shocking movie ever made" category. It is rare that I see a movie that makes me turn away from the screen but this one did. It is very brutal. Both attack scenes are gut wrenching in their absolute violence. Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassell have taken great risk in making this movie. Up until now I thought "Salo" was the most intense movie I had ever seen but Irreversible certainly belongs in that same category. Not for the squeamish.
I hadn't heard of this movie - thanks for pointing it out, sounds like it's worth checking out. Aside - also in the running for "most shocking movie ever made", Ichi The Killer seems to be getting a lot of press: http://www.ichithekiller.com/
Wow. I haven't seen Irreversible yet, but on that recommendation alone, I'll have to see it. So far, I've seen only two movies that can compare with Salo in that category: Cannibal Holocaust and Nekromantik. And I watched both of those in the same day!
The two main scenes....an savage revenge killing deep inside a gay nightclub called the Rectum is something to see. But its the rape scene inside a underground walkway that made me look away. This scene really shows the savagely of rape. Just sickening. And it all can be because of random luck or bad luck in this case.
Both brutal sequences have some CGI going on in them. More info here: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0290673/ I saw this in the theater. I enjoyed it from an artistic point of view, but it's something I'd be hard pressed to sit through again.
I agree that this movie is definitely an 'experience' and not really for the better per say. The movie basically frames a rape and a revenge killing. It does it with the subtly of a 2X4 across the back of your head. Obviously the film maker wanted you to feel the realism of these subjects, and he definitely succeeds. Now are these subject matters that somehow say something about the human condition or on the other side of the film coin, entertain me in some way? It definitely connects you with that sickening, dark, and visceral brutal act of rape. THe killing too is direct and real with no stylizing. I am weary to recommend this movie to anyone else seeing it if they really weren't for whatever reason interested in the subject matter, the director, or the actors already. I actually had a very similar feeling/response to another film this year which was Elephant. I actually as I think about it had a similar feeling/response to another film from the past which is Man Bites Dog, which however I think is really a waste of celluloid, though I don't need to comment further on that. So i guess I just wanted to post this to make abundantly clear what the movie was about and that you should really know this before watching it, at least in my opinion.
My main reason to see this movie was to gander at the very beautiful Monica Bellucci but obviously Malena (2000) is a better film if you want to see Monica act. Irreversible is dark and ugly so as B & W says, be prepared.
The film was strong, but that's all it was for me. It didn't make me think about the issues at hand and didn't really work artistically, IMO. There didn't seem to be a point to it being told backwards (like there was in Memento), other than stylistically, which doesn't quite click for me. And, yes, I rented it just because Monical Bellucci was in it. :b
