Enter The Void — -2009-

It is too long. It is repetitive. It is emotionally manipulative. By the time the final shot arrives (a cosmic, uterine zoom that will leave you speechless), you may feel less like you’ve watched a movie and more like you’ve survived a haunting.

Noé takes this ancient text literally. The entire runtime is Oscar’s Bardo. He is terrified of the light (rebirth), so he floats backward, reliving his trauma. He watches his sister have sex, watches his friends argue, watches the city breathe—but he cannot touch anything. He is a poltergeist of nostalgia. enter the void -2009-

Just remember to breathe. Have you survived the Tokyo trip? Or did you turn it off during the title sequence? Let me know in the comments—if you’ve recovered enough to type. It is too long

We don't watch Oscar. We are Oscar. The camera is a ghost. And for two and a half hours, we float. If you haven’t seen Enter the Void , you have no reference for its visual language. Noé famously shot the entire film from a first-person POV, but not like a video game. The camera hovers, swoops through walls, zooms across the city skyline, and peers into the windows of strangers. By the time the final shot arrives (a

From the moment the bullet hits, Oscar’s spirit (or consciousness) detaches from his corpse. Bound by a promise to protect his sister, Linda (a stripper at a club called "The Void"), Oscar’s ghost drifts, omnisciently, through the neon-lit streets and claustrophobic apartments of Tokyo.