It has often been said that no one could truly know the events that unfold after death, and it is apparent that a considerable amount of time has been devoted to the contemplation of mortality. A few suggest that they possess the knowledge of such events due to experiences of near-death encounters, but in reality, such insight is nonexistent to most of us. One of the most important questions many have about death is the fate of the mind and consciousness. If one is asleep, a mind continues to dream. But in case of death when there is no body to return to, where does the mind go? Perhaps a less convoluted way of seeing this is to ask, “How do you remember what it felt like before you were born?” That’s what’s called death. Nothing is there.
Neurologists have found organized gamma waves in working centers equated to memory, cognition, focus, etc., if viewed from a neurological angle. Hence, our brains reportedly become highly active right before death. My personal wish is that the chemicals that amass in our minds in the dying moments do an extraordinary job in ensuring we do not realize that we are dead. Rather, we are suspended in a psychedelic-like space, but it seems to us that we are in it for ages, in reality, it has only been a few moments. Such as our final journey from our mind & body ‘The struggling amidst all the chaos.’
Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) lives in Tokyo together with his sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). The Siblings have been living together for a long time now, having lost their parents during childhood. Their situation is not very pleasant. While Linda has become a stripper with an incredibly groping manager, Oscar has begun to sell drugs himself. One evening, Oscar lights up some DMT cement and starts getting elaborate loads of hallucinated profound shapes. He is soon interrupted when his acquaintance, Victor, calls and asks him to meet him for a deal at The Void bar. Oscar, along with his other friend Alex, goes over to the bar for a drink and finds out that the whole scenario was a police officer operation. Still trying to dispose off the drugs down the bar’s toilet, the police bangs on the locked door. Oscar tries to call back, thinking they seem to have understood that he’s armed. Suddenly, a shot echoes through the space; Oscar feels a sharp pain in his chest, looks down and then all goes blank. The movie begins.
Enter the Void is shocking work again by the French director Gaspar Noé, whose films, to be completely honest with myself, are somewhat scary. From what I’ve heard and seen, they look very visually shocking so I haven’t really actively looked for any movies of a similar kind. Actually, the only one I’ve seen is Climax, which I thought was quite decent. His other scandalous films I am familiar with a lot as well as several clips of them I have watched. It’s not exactly pleasant for me and I can’t help having that kind of feelings in my chest and that’s why I wanted them to be over. But there is a choice made by the patrons so I all finished watching Enter the Void, which is an interesting movie that I’ve heard several good and bad things about.
I want to note that it is extremely deep and sounds like a DMT haze according to the words of Noé. Dying is not as funny as in Defend Your Life, or the body transition routines in Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait. This was Noe’s reason for directing a film that emerged from a lifetime experience. Noé stated that during a psilocybin experience in his late teens in his 20s, he pictured Out of the Minute Out, a 1947 movie allowing him to view through first person. Noé thought that if he ever made a film on life after death he would prefer such an approach. And we have one directed by him.
This film is not only about death, but also about the art of filmmaking. Noé is absolutely obsessed with how the viewers of a picture perceive the footage. He employed English-speaking actors, one of the reasons being that the picture was made for a global audience which already spoke English, thus, reading subtitles wouldn’t have interested them to the most extent. The visuals would be more important.
Noé interprets this fantasy not as the state of what happens after someone passes away, rather as a momentary thought process that an individual who consumes DMT experiences. He also hinted towards the possibility that Oscar’s journey in this world might be starting once again, that the reality of the human mind might actually justify such an occurrence.
Enter the void is a film that has its lovers and fighters right from the very start. If I recall, one of my flatwater (a film buff like I am) had watched it and told me he was let down. He had considered, Irreversible, Noe’s earlier movie to be far superior. I haven’t watched the film yet, I don’t know if I will either but from its subject matter and the clips that I have watched I could imagine it being quite intense. I understand how Enter The Void might not be appealing for some. It’s more than 2 hours long and quite uneventful. I however saw the slow pacing as a necessary element to the story. We spent a lot of time suspended in midair staring down and then panning across Tokyo over one friend and then another. There is a plot that is developed while trying to resolve the life story of Oscar, but Noé carefully intersperses the elements of the bards (the waiting rooms in Buddhism).
I would say the main theme of the film It Is the Most Beautiful Thing’s documentary, is the realization of disappointment in existence. Noé doesn’t deny beauty, only points out that it is often overshadowed by sadness, which is more painful which I consider the main point in the story. Oscar’s recollection of their parents’ death in a car crash is recalled ad nauseam but with more and more details each time. The painful wails of small Linda both break him and us. There comes a time in life when a wound is etched and thereafter, everything which takes place is interpreted through that lens. The journey that Oscar undertook is mired with vicissitudes and even traumatic events.
You are bound to feel all sorts of emotions during this film as this is based on a person’s life and the film does a really good job at portraying it. This film successfully brings great sadness most noticeably in the begins when the parents of the child pass away along with Children Linda’s cry as they struggle to take her from her brother. After that, it becomes even more difficult to watch as Linda is shown to have romance in her relation with her brother. It has been documented as well, that many people behave in a very strange way when they reunite with a family member after a long time. Their brains are perhaps getting confused with the meaning of love and sex in such situations.
Due to Linda’s occupation, Oscar sees her dancing nude on stage and having sex with her boss from above. He also saw how she got an abortion in the doctor’s office and someone’s dismembered brood, which Noe slowly showed during the moment of Oscar’s death. Honestly, I do won’t pretend Noe is simply trying to create a positive impact when he shows such bold scenes to the audience. At the very least, he does wish to get a certain response from the audience.
I refused to take the bait; these days, it’s very hard for me to be shocked by art because of what people do to the world around them.
I focused on this as a sociopolitical veneer being shattered, instead. If, in the afterlife, we get to watch our lives as well as the world, in all of its unfiltered nature, then we are in for some severe awakening. Yet, if I’m discorporate, it would be even less significant than during my life. People engage. People sob. People quarrel. People turn on one another. We can pretend they don’t, but it happens all the time.
There is no doubt that life is one of the worst experiences we could imagine because it is the only one we are able to imagine so vividly. Having enjoyed the trip, Integrate all the emotions and self-analysis that goes on, I can say for sure that the film managed to convey the floaty and sense of disconnection during the highs of the trips. I have not tried DMT, but I certainly wouldn’t say no to it given the right context and product, Never tried DMT, but with the right context and a good product, why not. Prepare for it the same way you would prepare for any important event in your life, be it a test, a wedding or anything else: the moment when you will die. It is inevitable. It is better to know in advance, because you will anyway undergo this experience.
Getting straight to the point, there are fragments of Enter the Void that can’t be reviewed. It is a movie that everyone has to see regardless of whether you enjoy it or not, and or, if you would recommend it or not. In my belief, while Gaspar Noe can be termed as a catalyst, he is an extraordinary director at the same time. He changes how the cinematic composition of a scene is captured, regardless of who wishes to view the shot, and he makes sure that certain moments of a film are painful to watch. The more I have pondered over Enter the Void ever since watching it, the better I find it. Such cinema, that shakes the audience to its core and offers never witnessed before images, is a rarity in this day and age.
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