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**Frownland** · 07-12-2017, 11:26 PM

I Stand Alone

Well, it doesn't have the dizziness of Enter the Void, the sickening violence of Irreversible, or the hardcore sex scenes of Love (which I've yet to finish). Or maybe a better way to put that is that it has those things to a far lesser extent than Noe's other movies. I think it's my favourite film that I've seen from him so far, mostly because of the introspective element, how it dives deep into the main character's mind. Irreversible pretty much traumatized me the first time I watched it and I was worried that this would do the same, but after the shock of the wife incident wore off the rest didn't seem as bad.

Spoiler for So, about that ending:

Gaspar Noe sure does prompt a lot of thinking with his movies. That alone makes me think that he's a great artist, because even though the act of watching his movies are experiences I don't want to repeat, the amount that they leave me reflecting on the movies and the themes counts for a lot. This is probably his best film.

07-12-2017, 11:26 PM	#19746 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,548	I Stand Alone Well, it doesn't have the dizziness of Enter the Void, the sickening violence of Irreversible, or the hardcore sex scenes of Love (which I've yet to finish). Or maybe a better way to put that is that it has those things to a far lesser extent than Noe's other movies. I think it's my favourite film that I've seen from him so far, mostly because of the introspective element, how it dives deep into the main character's mind. Irreversible pretty much traumatized me the first time I watched it and I was worried that this would do the same, but after the shock of the wife incident wore off the rest didn't seem as bad. Spoiler for So, about that ending: I initially had a pretty strong negative reaction to the very very end where the main character subverts and wonders about the ethics of incest. Him wondering what's wrong about his actions upset me more than him actually committing the incest or the forced abortion because it felt like Gaspar Noe was communicating that as the philosophy of the movie. The big, gaudy letters saying (in French) that you have just watched a Gaspar Noe film seemed to punch that notion in deeper. Then I thought about it a little bit more since I liked a lot of what was leading up to those closing lines. I realized that the movie isn't a manifesto, it's a portrait into the mind of the main character as he's giving into his urges with his (admittedly hot) daughter. His character is driven by animalistic instincts the entire film and his moral foundation is shaky if it even exists, as evidenced by the abortion and unabashed racism. Of course he's going to have flaws in his thinking. Noe didn't make this film to show why incest is okay. He did it to show how and why it can happens so that we can understand it better and how to stop it. Had the protagonist had help or lived in circumstances that didn't leave him disillusioned, he wouldn't have taken two steps down the path that led him to incest in the first place. Gaspar Noe sure does prompt a lot of thinking with his movies. That alone makes me think that he's a great artist, because even though the act of watching his movies are experiences I don't want to repeat, the amount that they leave me reflecting on the movies and the themes counts for a lot. This is probably his best film. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x