Time destroys everything

If you assume this film also in the league of movies which disrespect the clockwise time flow (aka Tarantino or González Iñárritu style) you will commit a big blunder. We have seen movies which go fast forward or come back, or toil with asynchronous modules, meeting at a crossroad and then again move or thrust the reverse gear. Irreversible does not bother about these zigzag movements, however it flows in a counter clockwise fashion. There are nine to ten sequences in the movie, and all events are brought up by the previous sequence. All current events are actually descendant of the past occurrences.

Much ado been addressed to the gory violent and explicit initial scenes of the movie. They are gruesome and of course there are realistic reasons behind people move off theatre during the showing of Irreversible. To make you more disturbed and agitated Gasper Noé played an irritating tune in a very low decibel for the first half of the movie, as an added element to offer you a feeling of nausea. With these, again there is the whirling and spinning fast camerawork to give you a raw annoying feeling.

The proverbial tagline “time destroys everything” is purely synonymous with the film. What we experience in Irreversible is not only breaking the laws of time movement, but as time progresses in the events of the movie, it degrades. Time is a killer, not a healer here. Time takes the ingredients of “now” and in return we see a horrific “then”. As the storyline begins, we see everything in a chaos. We see the chief protagonists of the movie whose emotions are breaching from their past behaviors and merciless brutality ruling their mind. The psyche of the movie goes parallel with the characters. The camera spins a lot, the characters twirl and we see everything are unbalanced and out of control, analogous to the movie. It is completely dark, lots of murky symbols and signs.

As the movie progresses, the story unfolds in the opposite direction, and we see how brilliantly the director regulates the control of movie making. The audience feels the personal despair in every shot, as they are well aware of the facts what hardhearted fate is coming in the next shot but no one can control the motion of time and us. The movie offers you better scenes than just before what you see. Colorful, cheerful elements are embracing life, protagonists are bartering jokes, people are partying, and kids are playing.

The end shot is a masterpiece. Bellucci is resting in a park and kids are playing with water valve. There is Beethoven’s seventh symphony in ambience, everything beside us so vibrant and smug in happiness. The camera lifts up and suddenly starts rolling, yet once more in an anti clockwise route. You see everything rolling down in an opposite way and the screen collapses in total white background.

Irreversible leaves you with many unanswered questions. Are we really puppet in the arms of time? Is there really a vicious and evil mask is hidden under our face which might recuperate anytime? Is everything really pre-defined and we are walking on the thin strip of chances?

A must must watch for any strict film buff. A must must not recommended else.

Irreversible (2002)
Directed By: Gasper Noé