Whether you think that Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible is brilliant, or one of the most deplorably violent films you ever had the dis-pleasure to see, one thing is certain: it images etch themselves deeply into the surface of the retina ... they grab on, as it where, and don’t let go. Two scenes in particular shout for attention ... one where a man’s head is repeatedly smashed with the butt of a fire hydrant ... another, a slow extended moment in which a gay pimp anally rapes Alex (Monica Bellucci) in a garish red underpass, gives her a couple of kicks in the head, and then pounds her face into the concrete pavement until she is comatose. Perceptive readers may have already discerned that this film isn’t for everyone ... in fact, it’s probably only a film for the few. Clearly, repulsion to graphic violence is highly personal, but it often conceals a more conventional, even conservative position, which generally tries to beat up the merits of suggestion over graphic description. This insistence that suggested violence is expressively superior to shown violence, however, does not rise solely from an interest in maximizing expression. It has an often concealed moral agenda. But it is this moral agenda that audiences should question: is it really morally better to keep graphic violence out of our films? Is it really more civil, more civilized? Is it not part of society’s desire to conceal its seamier side, to sweep it nicely out of sight? In Irréversible, Gaspar Noé chooses to use graphic violence because he wants to focus on the victim as much as the attacker. He wants us to see in detail the repercussive effects of brutality. Via the retina he wants us to feel how a single outburst of violent behaviour can destroy a person’s life beyond repair.
With all the controversy about graphic violence in films, it is important not to ignore the fact that it is not the graphic nature of Irréversible’s rape scene that gives it impact. It’s the length of the scene. I’m not in the habit of carrying a stopwatch into press screenings, but the rape must have gone on for 8 or 9 minutes. It felt like forever. And 8 or 9 minutes must be getting pretty close to reality -- I note this here because the very people who praise reality in film are the same ones who seem to wish for less reality when it comes to violence or sex. And Noé’s camera records everything. The pimp forces Alex to the ground ... the camera moves down with them, and stays at ground level ... watching as the pimp slowly rips away Alex’s clothes, covers her mouth, rips off her underpants, forces himself in. A man walks into the underpass at its far end ... pauses ... then quietly leaves. Noé is telling us that if we don’t want to watch we don’t have to, but he is not going to be the one to give us the reprieve.