Gaspar Noé is an intriguing figure in contemporary cinema. He is best known as a provocateur -- a latest admission to this reputation is his newest "3D sex film" "Love (2015) -- but this has not undermined his position as a prominent artist. Provocation partially arises from Noé's graphic representations of sex and violence but it is also due to his nihilist world view, his bleak takes on life and death, in which "time ruins everything," to quote the motto of Irréversible (2002), Noé's breakthrough film. Noé's debut film, "Seul contre tous" (1998) -- "I Stand Alone" or, literally, "alone against all" -- carries these more or less cynical notions as a story about an unemployed butcher who, fed up with his daily existence of boring family life, goes on a rampage against the world.
This set-up might give rise to associations with films such as "Taxi Driver" (1976) and "Falling Down" (1993), but Noé's film seems to bear deeper echoes from the works of Dostoevsky, Sartre, and Camus. The film does have a social dimension, as the protagonist has sunk into the bottom of the capitalist class society of France, but arguably this story could have been told in any other society. Thus it is more an existentialist story about man's desire to discover a raison d'être, to rise above the filth of his being, or, as the man himself puts it, to find "a reason to stay alive a little longer." Like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov or Camus' Mersault, he begins to act out of step with the world. "To each his own morality," he proclaims. He is a stranger. Like Sartre's Raquentin, existence and reality repulse him. He is utterly alone -- whether surrounded by people or not does not matter. He stands alone against the world.
If "Irréversible" captures the spectator with its hypnotic reversed narrative, "Seul contre tous" is more straight-forward. Yet, its fast pace, dynamic rhythm, and ferocious tempo, which are set up early on, take a strong grip of the spectator. They characterize Noé's narrative which is structured on the relentless use of jump cuts and rapid shifts of perspective. This style creates a unique spatio-temporal tension in which the borders between real and unreal, (right and wrong), potential and actual are crossed and obfuscated.
Although the film may be marred by potential exploitative nature, its impact is still both morally and existentially groundbreaking. "Seul contre tous" is a very direct film in the truest sense of the word. It's a wild Amok run across our world. Its profound nihilism does not lie in the mere depiction of the protagonist and his acts, but in the poignant sense that nothing really matters; that is to say, it does not matter whether these events actually happened or not. The course of humanity would not have been altered, and that scares the hell out of us. And that's what Noé wants to do. And that's why, I believe, he rises from misanthropy to humanism; that is, the mere existence of a film like this shows that, rather paradoxically perhaps, there is hope in the world.
This set-up might give rise to associations with films such as "Taxi Driver" (1976) and "Falling Down" (1993), but Noé's film seems to bear deeper echoes from the works of Dostoevsky, Sartre, and Camus. The film does have a social dimension, as the protagonist has sunk into the bottom of the capitalist class society of France, but arguably this story could have been told in any other society. Thus it is more an existentialist story about man's desire to discover a raison d'être, to rise above the filth of his being, or, as the man himself puts it, to find "a reason to stay alive a little longer." Like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov or Camus' Mersault, he begins to act out of step with the world. "To each his own morality," he proclaims. He is a stranger. Like Sartre's Raquentin, existence and reality repulse him. He is utterly alone -- whether surrounded by people or not does not matter. He stands alone against the world.
If "Irréversible" captures the spectator with its hypnotic reversed narrative, "Seul contre tous" is more straight-forward. Yet, its fast pace, dynamic rhythm, and ferocious tempo, which are set up early on, take a strong grip of the spectator. They characterize Noé's narrative which is structured on the relentless use of jump cuts and rapid shifts of perspective. This style creates a unique spatio-temporal tension in which the borders between real and unreal, (right and wrong), potential and actual are crossed and obfuscated.
Although the film may be marred by potential exploitative nature, its impact is still both morally and existentially groundbreaking. "Seul contre tous" is a very direct film in the truest sense of the word. It's a wild Amok run across our world. Its profound nihilism does not lie in the mere depiction of the protagonist and his acts, but in the poignant sense that nothing really matters; that is to say, it does not matter whether these events actually happened or not. The course of humanity would not have been altered, and that scares the hell out of us. And that's what Noé wants to do. And that's why, I believe, he rises from misanthropy to humanism; that is, the mere existence of a film like this shows that, rather paradoxically perhaps, there is hope in the world.