Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible was released in 2002 but I cannot think of very many films in those subsequent years that has come close to matching the ghastly visceral impact of its depiction of physical and sexual violence, including a 9-minute-long single-shot sequence involving a brutal rape that is perhaps the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in a movie. This does not make it a bad film, I hasten to add, but even its admirers—and I do believe it to be a powerful work that remains the best of Noe’s career to date—would admit that it is a hard one to sit through even once, let alone return to for a second glance. And yet, it is now returning to theaters in a newly rejiggered version entitled Irreversible: Straight Cut and while I take issue with the form in which it is being presented, the power of the filmmaking is still able to shine through, if that is the proper term.
For those of you who haven’t seen the film before, it tells a story of a ostensibly happy couple, Marcus and Alex (played by then-real-life couple Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci) whose lives are shattered forever when Alex is the victim of a rape and Marcus, along with friend (and former boyfriend of Alex) Pierre (Albert Dupontel), tracks down the person they believe to be the guilty party and beat him to death with a fire extinguisher in the middle of a sex club. This is grim enough but it is made even more ghastly by Noe’s conceit to have the events of the film, all of which are conveyed via extended single-shot takes, occur in reverse chronological order, meaning that two most grotesque sequences—the extinguisher beating and the rape—turn up fairly early in the proceedings, a choice that serves to both unsettle viewers right from the get-go and to cast a pall upon the subsequent scenes of them going about their normal lives, blissfully unaware—unlike those of us in the audience—of what is to come.
The difference between that original version and Irreversible: Straight Cut is that this time around, as suggested by the new subtitle, Noe has reversed the order of the scenes so that the story now plays out in chronological order with the more sedate scenes coming first and the more horrifying ones coming towards the end. (As far as I can tell, no other footage has been added or subtracted.) For those who have never seen the film before, the resulting experience will be a markedly different one from those who saw it in its original iteration. In some cases, such as the way that the film now better highlights certain tensions between the three main characters and Marcus’s propensity for bad-boy behavior, the changes are intriguing. Others are much less successful, particularly the way that the haunting ambiguity of a key aspect of the story’s conclusion—one that most viewers might not have even noticed at the time—has now essentially been done away with here.
Of course, if you have seen the film, the change is chronology has less impact because even in a more straightforward order, the knowledge of what is about to happen ends up cast another, albeit slightly different, pall over the proceedings. (That said, it is somewhat unlikely that someone at this point is going to wander into this particular film, regardless of which version, completely unaware of what is to come.) Of the two, I prefer the original take—that is the way that Noe originally designed for it to be seen and I don’t feel that the reverse approach brings enough to the party to justify its existence.
In essence, Irreversible: Straight Cut plays like the kind of thing that might have been included as an extra on the Blu-Ray. That said, even if the concept of this re-release comes closer to coming across as a gimmick than the original reverse version ever did, it does not diffuse the raw and intense power of Noe’s filmmaking or the heartbreakingly effective performance from Bellucci. Irreversible is a film that is worth watching, as difficult as it may be to do so at times, but anyone electing to do so would be better served by sticking with Noe’s initial vision—as this film proves, sometimes the straightforward path is not always the most effective one.