To experience Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, I began my afternoon journey by riding down the rickety escalators into the subterranean red neon depths of the Angelika movie house. When I reached the bottom I continued my decline into one of the long, thin shoebox capsule theaters that line the far wall, and into one of those audaciously discomfiting seats that intermittently rumble and snarl with the vibration of a subway train passing not more than 30 feet below. Darkness set in and then enveloped everything in its path, and the descent continued, through Noé’s nauseating ceaseless camera swirls and lurching single takes; through the opening sequence’s hellish S&M club murder, to the main characters’ rampaging through the Parisian streets seeking bloodthirsty vengeance, and then even further underground to the dimly lit passageway in which Monica Bellucci is subjected to the single most horrific and extended uncut rape scene one would see outside of snuff film. When finally, after ten unbearable minutes passed and the rapist, Le Tenia (Tapeworm), crawls off of her battered, aching body, the screen went blank. Not just faded out, but zapped out and died. Judging from Noé’s cinematic tricks and various audience-abusing techniques (backwards lettering, flickering lights, vomitous camera moves), this certainly could have been part of the film, timed as it was directly following the most unendurable of sequences. The theater was silent as the grave and pitch black. Suddenly the lights came on, bright as day. Obviously these were technical problems, either the most ill-timed mistake or perfectly suited merciful intermission one could imagine. I glanced to my right and looked at another theatergoer seated directly across from me in the sparsely attended room. His face ashen, his eyes darted at me and then back again and we shared a brief moment: a reflection of agony, of disbelief, of shame.The lights coming up fucntioned as a truth serum—the witnessing of the film was our dirty little secret we could enact anonymously, in the dark. Yet the projector malfunction had forced us to face ourselves.

If there’s anything more loathed this past year than the Angelika theater itself, it was Irreversible. For some, the ability of Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible to rip you apart, to first tear at the skin, then burrow deeper into your flesh, eat its way through pulp and gristle, then finally pierce the heart, wasn’t enough. The naysayers needed sufficient context, not just aesthetic mannerisms, to justify this demonic repository, this surgical procedure in the guise of a revenge art flick. Dismissals and walkouts at Cannes, as well as pockets of outrage at various festivals, obviously provoked intrigue more than rejection upon its U.S. theatrical release; its detractors got what they wanted—dismiss it as mere sensationalism and even its defenders will feel too embarassed to make much of a fuss, as they’ll be forced to convince themselves that they must just be giving in to their innate carnality. But Irreversible is much more than just a prurient object. The year’s only true horror film (forget 28 Days Later), it manages to repulse and disgust through new perspectives, not gimmickry. Elephant’s “noble” effort to similarly use the cinema to literally get a new angle on the extent of human brutality was widely lauded due to Gus Van Sant’s ultimate innocuousness-- just when he should be representing the repugnant blindness of our darkest spots, he falls into aesthetic repose. Noé doesn’t shy away, doesn’t hang a layer of cheesecloth between the audience and the onscreen terror. For all its radical avant-gardeness, Elephant is very easy to take; Irreversible doesn’t let us off easily. Van Sant is celebrated, Noé is vilified.

Much has been made of Elephant’s likeness to The Shining, attributable to its dislocated sense of wandering through the cavernous hallways of a phantom-infested high school. Irreversible, with its myriad corridors of lurking horrors, is itself fashioned similarly, but structured as one uncut backward freefall through a tunnel straight from hell. Told as nine presumably single-take sequences in reverse order (plus prologue and epilogue), the effect is of a continuous underground burrowing back to Earth’s surface—through the hellish nightclub Rectum, back through the maze-like Parisian avenues, to the site of the rape, to the intricate choreography that follows actors from elevators through fluorescent garages and subway cars. The use of the uncut take replicates continous forward motion, a single vision interrupted by occasional camera hiccups and thrusts—even the most innocent scene, the final images of the couple’s doomed reverie as they lounge about their small apartment, becomes a labyrinth of white walls, tousled bed sheets, and intimate kisses.

Noé doesn’t just revel in shoving the viewer’s face in filth, he wants us to confront our naivete as both moral philosphers and movie watchers. Irreversible is, if nothing else, a film about narrative complacency. By beginning with the “payoff,” the violent retribution that would normally culminate a rape-revenge melodrama (though here enacted on the wrong man), Noé gives us ninety more minutes of contemplation—the idea of a revenge film that begins with a revenge scene so horrific (a face is pummelled and busted open like a rotten pumpkin, seemingly without cuts) yet so abstracted (we have no idea why this unimaginable horror is taking place) is more than just trickery, it’s truly transgressive. Critics needed justification for all this visual degradation, yet it’s the concept of the film that denies narrative justification. The monstrous, ten-minute rape scene certainly reignites our blood lust momentarily, but there’s no denying the film’s trajectory—by already having shown the rapist’s death, there is no relief for the viewer. Noé demonstrates that vigilantism brings no satisfaction. And he expresses it through cinema’s very narrative functions, whereas in Mystic River, Clint Eastwood painted it in more broadly “literate” strokes, grandiose Greek tragic gestures and dire monologues.

Where Noé throws doubtful viewers is with his trademark huge-font title cards. As a final, ironic statement, Noé emblazons in imposing bold letters, “Time Destroys All Things,” directly after assaulting us with nauseating strobe effects. Yes, after showing us such horrors, the assertion couldn’t be further from human experience. By pretending to be able to reduce it all to a one simple platitude, Noé threatens to receive a harrumphing, “Is that all there is?” from an audience that’s been put through the mill. But Noé’s aware that clichés signify nothing beyond their own smugness, that these generalizations provide a satisfaction he is narratively unwilling to give. As in his prior stomach-churner I Stand Alone, the connection of words with pictures strikes a tenuous bond, leaving us untrusting of an authorial voice. The “Love Conquers All”-ish title card closer in that film superficially appeared to condone incest and rape. Noé’s work is a cinema of billboards, of purposely false advertising and specious claims. In Irreversible, after walloping us with images and falsely placating us with words, Noé blinds us with light. We don’t even get the resolution of closing credits.