Gaspar Noé
Seul contre tous

LA RECENSIONE

Everything is black

A man who narrates. A story. The story is not just a caption of a moment; it is imagination, intuition, or hypothesis. The story begins from a tangle of thoughts, and often, the most difficult thing is not to give birth to them but to untangle them.

A narration through the unfiltered thoughts of the protagonist: and yes, it recalls the infuriated Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. And yes, like him, he broods over the sense of existence even in a porn cinema, but in my very ignorant and crude way of seeing things, there is no more winning system.

Gaspar Noé tells a psychological journey that follows a forced path towards depression and oblivion, towards losing reason and the most animalistic instinct of the human being. It's too easy to fight the long introspections of the protagonist, consisting of soliloquies through the voiceover interpreting his thoughts, with responses of positivity and futile bar lightening. As if one were the only one to know that not everything in the world is there to devastate our existence: criticizing the nihilism of this film is the most blatant demonstration of superficiality and presumption there can be.

The static images alternate with long sequence shots capturing a Philippe Nahon (impeccable) almost mute throughout the film, attempting to portray how a man can reach such a point; the director strives to stage a true ascent to personal defeat, trying to maintain its realism throughout the movie: this also means making the protagonist's reflections a pneumatic hammer driven by hatred, repression, a sense of impotence, disgust, and blind rage.

And shortly after a countdown urges us to abandon the movie within thirty seconds, the man who until this point was alone against everyone, but also alone with himself, finds his way to continue the much-hated existence, making it, if possible, even more bitter. I'm sorry.