Irreversible (2002) Might Be the Most Misunderstood Film of All Time

I’m not going to mince words. I think that Irreversible (2002) was not only a great film, it was horribly misunderstood. In fact, it might just be one of the most misunderstood films of all time. No one seemed to get this film–not the fanboys who think it’s a masterpiece, not the haters who think it’s garbage.

Why is the movie so misunderstood? A large part of the reason is Gaspar Noé’s fault. He did such a good job of completely alienating the audiences with brutal scenes of rape and violence that a lot of what the movie was trying to say was lost in translation. This reminds me of what happened when I saw Man Bites Dog. It might’ve been a brilliant satire, but it was so disturbing that it was years before I could get my wits together to finally think about what it was saying and doing. I have no doubt that something similar happened with Irreversible. People just couldn’t get past the brutality.

Irreversible (2002): Tunnel scene

Another reason why Irreversible is misunderstood is that it’s an art house film. So just by virtue of being art house, people who either love or hate this genre were bound to come to it with certain preconceived notions and biases, which is exactly what happened. On one hand, you had the typical pretentious hipsters loving it for all the wrong reasons. On the other, you had art house detractors assuming that because it was art house, it was a sensationalist, exploitative piece of crap like Salo, just being shocking for the sake of shocking under pretense of saying something meaningful.

Normally, with a film like this, I don’t go out of my way to make some kind of appeal on its behalf. However, there were so many fascinating themes it was trying to explore that I just felt compelled to clear the air of confusion that surrounds this film by explaining what those themes were and what the movie was trying to say about them. But before I do, let’s start with a recap to refresh everyone’s memory.

The Recap

A middle-aged and young man are on a bed talking about what they did to get in jail. The middle-aged man admits that he “made love” to his daughter. After he and the younger man talk for some time, he finally says in a sound of regret, “Time destroys everything.”

Next, we see two a swarm of police and an ambulance outside of a building. One man, Pierre, is being taken in by police and the other, Marcus, is being placed inside of an ambulance by paramedics. All the while, there are two men in the background screaming the most abusive, homophobic slurs you can ever imagine at them, ranting that they want their money, that Marcus and Pierre will be raped in prison and catch AIDs.

The camerawork spins, and we jump back in time a little bit. We see that the guy that was taken in by ambulance, Marcus, is on the warpath looking for a man named Le Tenia inside of an underground BDSM gay club. His friend, Pierre, is begging him to leave because the club, Rectum, is filled with dangerous thugs. Marcus ignores him and threatens a guy who he thinks is Le Tenia. The guy breaks Marcus’ arm, then tries to rape him. Then Pierre comes along and rescues him, but not without bludgeoning the thug to death with a fire extinguisher, to the point of caving in his skull. As it turns out, Le Tenia–the guy Marcus had been looking for–is in the background watching the entire scene unfold in front of him.

Irreversible scene at Rectum BDSM club

The movie repeatedly keeps time jumping back to earlier parts of the evening, and we learn the reason why Marcus was looking for Le Tenia is that his girlfriend, Alex, was brutally raped and beaten after leaving a party they were attending together. She left the party in a huff because Marcus, a substance abuser, did a few lines of cokes and was tweaked out of his mind. When we jump back even further to the day’s events, we learn that Alex had taken a pregnancy test and found out she was pregnant. Finally, we learn that her day had started reading a book at the park out on a gorgeous summer day.

Finis.

Okay, hold the phone. From the way I recapped the movie, it sounds as if there was nothing to Irreversible. A lot of people felt that way, too, when they saw it. They thought that it was a nothing story about a woman who gets raped the day she learns she’s pregnant and that the only reason why Noé had the film go backwards was to disguise how threadbare the story was.

On the contrary, mes amis. There were lots of themes being explored in Irreversible, far more than you would think.

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