anyway
In many parts, it reminded me of the SMACK MY BITCH UP video by Prodigy. This is not a bad thing. This film was quite the technical achivement, and a lot of the sound design, lighting, set design, etc. was remarkable. It is probably Noe's best film... I kept going, "Wow, how did he get that shot? How did he do THAT?" I was impressed with the technical side of the film -- very impressed, in most cases. The long takes were filled with good acting, impressive camera movements, and just the LENGTH of the shots made the film constantly compelling -- there's an energy, an urgency, to it.. like, at any second, one of the actors is going to flub their lines or something. But everyone was spot on, pretty inspirational.
Still, besides some amazing technical achivements, it didn't completely excite me as a movie. I felt it dragged, sometimes it really dragged; I was a worn out by the end (probably the point of the director).
This film is definitely more of an event, an experience, than a "movie"; as a story -- with plots and characters -- there's nothing I found compelling or groundbreaking about it. But the visuals and the sound made quite an impact; if you can, watch this on a big screen, in the dark, pretty amazing stuff.
This film brought to mind a few other films... VISIONS OF SUFFERING (all the weird hallucinatory visuals, the party scenes, the tone of the film, the mood, the sound design, the atmosphere, and the length), STRANGE DAYS (the opening stuff especially), and MILLENIUM MAMBO (one of my all time favorite movies; that film's moodiness and color scheme seemed to be an influence on ENTER THE VOID). If you like any of those films at all, you'll probably get into this.
Definitely an outstanding -- and DARING -- technical achievement, of surprising and overwhelming, immense artistic depth. Some absolutely AMAZING shots and sound design here, wow (trying not to spoil anything here.. there's a scene about 20 minutes into the movie where the camera slowly zooms into a row of lights until you just see one extreme closeup of a flashing light, as the camera zooms in a heavenly high pitched drone slowly rises from complete silence... the sound and the image combine to create a truly heavenly, AMAZING mashup unlike anything I've ever seen). Atmospherically, it's one of the best films I've ever seen, but it's tough to reccomend, uh, "as a film". So, if you go into this looking for a typical, uh "movie",you won't find much to enjoy. Still, I wasn't looking for anything like that, so I was surprised by how good most of it was.
Noe's finest work to date. A bit too long and draggy, but when it's on, it's on.
ENTER THE VOID - 7/10