enter the void
The most recent feature film by Gaspar Noe, Enter the Void, is a visually gripping film. Like a rollercoaster from the afterlife, this psychedelic melodrama(2) takes you through one’s perspective of death and what happens after your final breath. Noe has absolutely outdone himself in this masterpiece of cinematography. Much like his film, Irreversible, the camera soars through the air above Tokyo twisting and twirling from character to character and building to building. Shot entirely in first and third person through the eyes of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), Noe said in an interview with Nicolas Schmerkin, “the technique of filming through the eyes of a character is the most beautiful cinematographic artifice there could be.”(2) And he was right. The film opens with Oscar, a drug dealer, and his sister Linda (Paz de la Puerta), an exotic dancer, in their Tokyo apartment. Oscar recommends the book The Tibetan Book of the Dead to Linda. He describes it as being “all about what happens after you die”(1), setting the premise of the film. One thing that caught my attention immediately about the first person perspective is that you can see when he blinks. This subtle, yet accurate, depiction of the first person view point is impressive. I felt as if I was Oscar. In a visually captivating scene, he sits down to smoke some of the drug known as DMT. He begins to have an outer body experience, as he starts to hallucinate, filled with vibrant colors and eerie shapes. Shortly after, in one of the best shots I’ve ever seen, Oscar looks at himself in the mirror. With no camera visible in the shot, he rubs his eyes and his hands cover the camera. He splashes water in his face and dries it with a towel when it drapes over the camera lense. An absolutely amazing shot that left me wondering how they did it. Oscar meets up with his friend Alex (Cyril Roy) as they begin walking through the streets of Tokyo on their way to a drug deal with Oscar’s friend Victor