Enter the Void
Enter the Void is an exhausting search for the meaning of life in the form of a psychedelic trip through the life and death of an American drug dealer in Tokyo.
An exhausting search for the meaning of life in the form of a psychedelic trip through the life and death of an American drug dealer in Tokyo.
If you manage to get through the wildly flickering opening credits without an epileptic seizure, the next challenge is not to get seasick from the unsteady camera work. Sure, you're supposed to experience the story through the eyes of Oscar, the constantly intoxicated protagonist. But the ever swiveling camera is not the most professional way of letting the viewer know. You will be relieved when the camera finally sits on a tripod again.
Everything the movie shows is done in an extreme and raw way. Both the infinitely long psychedelic animations like those that Stanley Kubrik annoyed us with in 1968 in "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Slava Tsukerman in 1982 in "Liquid Sky". Despite the boring stretches, "Enter the Void" is anything but a boring movie.
It is a brutally illustrated story of love, sex, intoxication, loyalty, betrayal, strokes of fate, revenge and ultimately the search for the meaning of life and death. And it is by all means worth the ordeal of watching it.
Title: Enter the Void
Year of release: 2009
Director: Gaspar Noé
IMDB: 7.2