Review of Enter the Void (Short Version)
I think I’ve found myself a new favorite director.
Legally, a movie like Enter the Void shouldn’t be this good. With a budget of only 13,000,000 euros it makes me ponder on the plausibility of how far filmmaking can advance with the right man behind the camera. Gaspar Noé’s drug inducing, stress ball of an adventure through life and death is one that has never quite been explored as it has through the modi operandi. This can be sighted through the implications of Noé’s technical prowess that enthusiastically challenges the modern viewer’s brainpower while also, departing beyond the abstracts of human generality.
As one who has witnessed the film could imagine, I had to venture on an expeditious Google search mission so that I can figure out how in the world this movie was even made. It overwhelms my mind to even consider that such camera, editing, and visual effect components were able to mesh together so flawlessly and so horizontally in a film birthed during this generation of shallowed-fueled cinematic creativity.
The nonlinear timeline displayed in this film that jumps rapidly back and forth, back and forth like a deranged breakdown flashing before one’s eyes before entering their next destination is narrative structuring immaculateness. I swear, if you watch this movie on any type of drug, you will d-i-e considering how zestful and bouncy its psychedelic tone is.
Noé uses chronic replication, blurry picturesques, and optical instruments to make his visuals dynamite. The best parallel to describe watching this movie is that it’s like sailing on a beautiful rainbow with a magical leprechaun by your side except, later down the road Satan comes along and corrupts the iridescent wave causing you to fall into a toxic volcano of fire and dispatch—while you’re simultaneously high off of acid of course. And if you thought that made no sense, try watching this movie and explaining the visuals yourself through similes. Yeah, that’s what I thought. As stupid as whatever in the what I just wrote right now sounds, I’m plainly trying to say that the film is indescribable. It’s a colorful blow to the membrane that will baffle you in every frame it showcases because it is unlike anything ever seen in the human optics.
Enter the Void’s direction in exhibition is superb, superb, and did I mention superb? Every camera movement, every CGI element, every lighting flash is utilized in areas no filmmaker has ever gone. Gaspar Noé is somehow able to put the camera into every position possible within the conceptual space of our existence, giving us a full visceral view of the scenarios transpiring before us. It’s a hell of a trip alright.
Oh, and did I say yet that the editing is seamless? S-e-a-m-l-e-s-s. Marc Boucrot, Jérôme Pesnel, and Gaspar Noé himself all deserve huge, huge shoutouts for their precise craftmanship exploited in the editing room. Not only that, but they deserve numerous academy awards from all across the globe for their diligent work as well.
Ultimately, Gaspar Noé’s imaginative mentality causes Enter the Void’s perspective to seem so submissively soothing and heavenly yet somehow, concomitantly function within a barricaded, harrowing situation. The experience doesn’t feel like watching a film, it’s like visiting a mighty, neo-flaring dream of your own.
Gaspar Noé’s 2009 magnetizing knockout Enter the Void, is the next step for cinematic evolution. Noé casually takes us through life, purgatory, rebirth and much more through a philosophical postulation without questioning the fact that he has quite possibly broken the boundaries of what we can now consider “perfect” cinema. So, when you get right down to it, this movie is going to make every other filmmaker’s attempt at construction look like s***.
Verdict: A+
This Movie is a Part of My List: The Victors of the 2000s
“Enter the Void” is now avaliable to rent and buy on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Google Play, and iTunes.
Burning the Celluloid 
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