This will be the fourth time I’ve written about Enter the Void on this site. I’ve yet to grow tired of recommending this strange, hypnotic and unfading movie to people. I saw the movie twice in theaters and will likely give the Blu-ray disc regular plays. Despite its extensive run time, it’s ever inviting for revisits.
The Blu-ray release is a “Full Length Director’s Cut,” which is twenty minutes longer than the 142-minutes version released in US cinemas last September. This cut was the one theatrically released in France and Japan, and very briefly in New York and LA last January. There aren’t anything too essential in those extra minutes, but in a winding movie like this, scenes blur together anyway.
Visceral, uncompromising and just a tad beyond the pale; it's easy to see why Gaspar Noe's latest artful shock-theater had no chance of penetrating the mainstream. Not so much because of the graphic depiction of an abortion or the surreal sex scenes than it is the insistence to let strange, ethereal images guide the loose narrative. It's vignettes of past, present and afterlife for nearly three hours with little in the way of exposition or explanation, telling the tale of a drug dealing American teenager's ghostly visions after his death at the hands of Japanese police. Like a drug high, it maintains a baseline of intrigue and keeps you wanting it to go on and on, even as it reaches the point of rambling.
It’s a theatrical experience that’s best put as “a trip” if you had gotten the chance to see it on the big screen (the feeling reminded me of the time I saw a 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen—mesmerizing), but on Blu-ray, it offers a unique experience too. Watching a guy tripping in his apartment by himself and going on a lonely, internal journey becomes a parallel with the viewer’s own predicament, particularly enhanced by the majority of the film being in first-person view. When he then becomes a voyeur to his own sister’s sexual act, the uncomfortable sensation of his floating spectatorship is compounded by our participation of it. The ribald images become another step seedier when viewed in private, out from under the protective context of the cinema. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing here.
With the right television set up, dimmed lights, and that little hidden box under the couch filled with a vice of your choosing, you could find the film’s main character a little more relatable than before in the comfort of your own home.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The only “real” featurette that has anything to do with the making of the film is a silent 12-minute VFX reel that highlights all the computer effects used to make this film possible, which are plenty. The rest of the extras are simply a collection of (before post) deleted scenes and promotional materials: both unused and used trailers, all the one-sheets, and so on.
Two so-called extended scenes—the trippy “Vortex” and “DMT” scenes from the beginning of the movie—are singled out to provide a visual companions for your parties or your, er, more discreet activities. They do nothing to impede the suggestion that the movie is not just Gaspar Noe’s extended drug fantasy, but they look great.
"Enter the Void - Full Length Director's Cut" is on sale January 25, 2011 and is not rated. Drama. Written and directed by Gaspar Noé. Starring Nathaniel Brown, Paz De La Huerta.
