Irreversible Reviews

Brilliant but extremely harrowing - not for the timid

This was one of the hardest, most excrutiatingly difficult DVD experiences I have ever sat through. Escapist hobbity-gobbledygook this is not. Even from the comfort of my armchair, I couldn't avoid the brutal reality this film dragged me through with its cold, cold eye. A work of unremitting honesty and not a little genius. Not for the faint eye-lidded!

Thought provoking Trauma

Gaspar No?'s film, as a shocking and brutal as it is - depicts violence as violence. Typical Hollywood revenge movies portray the hero as the victim -- with the camera, the music, and the script working towards the heroes cause. This movie is a revenge movie too - but by playing the film backwards, we don't see the initial act of incitement. Instead we see the 'heroes' violent revenge as an outsider would, with repulsion. Haunted by the films theme soundtrack - two low, oscillated tones, grinding against each other in a dull, dreary, and sickly-inducing wave, the camera twirls through the air, an impassionate willow-wisp watching our deprived world through uncensored eyes. This movie is not for the sick of stomach. It is not a popcorn flick. This movie could leave you disturbed for weeks. This movie will not flinch. The cameras objective dispassion is creepy. It stares as if enthralled, never looking away from the horrible rape scene. This leaves you with the violence at its core, with no Hollywood thrills, or pacifiers of any kind. It made me question whether I should or shouldn't be flinching and pressing fast forward ever once in a while. You can handle reality, but you may not want to.

Masterpiece- work of art

As with his debut Seul Contre Tous Noe does not hold back. He is a director of intelligence of bite and with unrelenting conviction. What he draws in this picture is the plight of humanity, the capacity for love and for hate and it draws both of these with teeming realism. Hell for the first half is evident in the swirling movement of camera the dizzying music and extreme images. Then love between Belluci and Cassell is affectionately displayed, with respect and admiration of intimacy. To comment so profoundly on the inherent nature of all of mankind is a work that cannot be ignored for its message even by the right wing bigots who work in the media.

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just because

Just because this film is sequenced backwards don't let it fool you that it is anything but gratuitous violence. There are scenes in this film that sink heavy and will never be forgotten, I am not one for censorship but the 12 minute rape and the club bashing scene leave nothing to imagination or subtlety. Apart from Independence day this is the only other film in my life I have walked out of.

An extraordinary film

Brutal, harrowing and, yet, hauntingly beautiful, this extraordinary film will leave you shaken, but aware that a truth about the randomness of cruelty and the brittleness of civilisation has been traumatically and yet, in a strange way, sympathetically illuminated. As the story unfolds (?) from its frenetic and violent ending it becomes increasingly elegaic and tender, poetic even, leaving the viewer with the uncomfortable realisation that small and insignificant events and decisions can destroy everything we value, even our ability to control the violence within us. Or even more chillingly, as the film hints, that our destinies are pre-ordained.

It's powerful stuff: but what makes it especially shattering is that the story is revealed by an increasingly gentle camera, ending in a gloriously poignant sequence that highlights the waste and tragedy of all that has gone before.

A fabulously convincing cast, inovative photography and a masterly director ensure that this shocking, but not gratuitous, film will stay with you for a long time.