Anyone else actually think this movie is amazing?

I know most people only watch it for the notoriety or just to say they did (even though the worst is over after about 30 minutes). I know I probably wouldn't have even heard of it if it weren't for the gorecore phase I went through in my mid-teens. Thing is, I grew out of that phase a long time ago (I'm 27 now), but yet I still adore this movie. I would put it in my top 10 easily. Yes, right next to Magnolia and Back to the Future.

This was an early "omg its so disturbing" movie for me. I think I had only seen tame stuff like Hostel, the Saw sequels (the first one is still good) and maybe I had seen Ichi the Killer, I can't remember. I remember buying this at Best Buy of all places while my dad was with me and I was actually scared to watch it like a little kid too scared to watch Halloween or something. I finally watched it with my brother, in the dark, expecting the experience to be akin to watching a scary movie and I just remembered we were both glued to the tv with no way to escape. I had never seen anything as confrontational and in your face as this film. It's so disorienting and chaotic, not to mention the, in my opinion, justified display of brutality and violence. You literally cannot look away, even while a man is getting his face bashed in, or the infamous rape scene. That scene changed me as a person but that's another story.

The disturbing subject matter aside, really it's camera work and the cinematography. I already know people will think I'm crazy for saying that but I honestly think it's brilliantly done and always (well, most of the time) for a purpose. During the scene where they're seemingly climbing a circular staircase in The Rectum, the camera is so frantic that, really, you're only seeing glimpses of red lights coating the men perform extremely hardcore sexual acts on each other. The camera disappears back into black for a second, then coming up again for another glimpse. The whole time you're filling in the gaps, all the while fighting against a haunting sound effect that loops constantly and supposedly contains a frequency that is played so low it causes nausea (which I actually believe is a myth, but still, the placebo effect is great as you probably will feel ill if you get motion sick easily, or epileptic for that matter). Point being, you don't just see or hear what Marcus is going through... if your eyes are on the screen, you absolutely HAVE to feel it. This goes on for several minutes and suddenly there's distance and you see who you've been following through this nightmare. In the fight scene before the fire estinguisher part, the camera moves fast and very precise behind objects, once again obscuring what is actually happening before landing on a perfectly framed shot of Marcus getting his arm broken like a twig, then right back into the darkness. The whole time this is going on, you're basically just relying on dialogue (or subtitles if you don't speak French) trying to discern what is happening until suddenly, the camera drops to the ground and you watch a guy you know nothing about slowly cave another man's head in with a fire extinguisher.

This movie beats the hell out of you, emotionally and almost physically with it's full on assault against your senses (and also if the myth about the frequency is true).

I also like how every new "segment" is edited to seem like one long take, lasting up to 10-12 minutes sometimes. The cool effects like the camera moving in and out of a car's windows while it's in motion, the party scene with the action moving in and out of tight spaces, in and out of elevators, switching from handheld to cranes to pan over the actors walking down a staircase and it all looks so seamless. The subway scene is simple and actually resembles something out of a Woody Allen movie. It's very effective and one of the sadder scenes of the second half as you get to know who these people were before this terrible tragedy occured.

One of my favorite "shots" is right after Pierre kills the man, the camera violently jerks up to reveal the actual rapist, holds for a few seconds, and just slowly winds down, peering over the aftermath. The camera itself is an important and essential entity within the film. Just by watching this, I gained so much more respect for the art of cinematography in general. And you can't forget the pull away shot (done by helicopter I think?) at the end. It's such a beautiful scene of someone who is happy. It's so simple, yet it's the most heartbreaking scene in the film. It has this effect on you, it's such a wonderful image after so much darkness that you actually feel euphoric as if this were a happy ending. But the camera pulls away spinning faster and faster until the image is completely erased and replaced with flashing lights and colors flickering in a strobe light fashion, reminding you of where the story ends up.

It truly is, in my opinion, a remarkable film. Sure it's not perfect. It drags a little at some parts and some of the subplots are just weird, like them chasing down the transexual prostitute. Some people think theres not much to see after the rape scene but I fully disagree. To me, this isn't I Spit On Your Grave (which I abhor) and doesn't want to be. Irreversible may not be that deep of a movie in which you'll find much beneath the surface, but the disturbing subject matter and how it's presented is justified in my opinion. The acting is also superb, and since the dialogue is mostly improvised by two people who were in an a real relationship at a time, it's very believable and not vapid like Enter the Void where the focus was basically 100% on the visuals and camera work.

Wow. Didn't mean to ramble. I just feel this movie deserves more than just comparisons to garbage like Salo or the aforementioned I Spit On Your Grave. I think it has enough artistic merit to be considered, at the least, a huge technical achievement in cinema. But I understand not everyone can handle the ride and the alleged homophobia will probably always be a stigma it will unfortunately carry.

Anyway. I grew out of my "gotta see every messed up movie there is" and realized most of them, like August Underground or the first two Guinea Pig movies, are actually just terrible movies and I was only watching them because I was a bored teenager looking to push my limits. I never grew out of Irreversible though. I've seen it several times and actually have it queued as I type this. It's one of the ones that stayed with me, alongside Ichi the Killer and Visitor Q (I could make a similar thread to this one for that movie).