Climax

Starring: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Kiddy Smile, Claude Gajan Maull

Director: Gaspar Noé

I enjoyed Gaspar Noé’s film Climax, and I am also discovering I am a bit of a masochist at the movies. If Pleasant and Unpleasant are two ends of a Venn Diagram, this sits somewhere along the line between them intersecting and Upleasant. That’s because this movie portrays some truly horrifying things, all of which are entirely possible, but is also terrifically made and almost never boring.

If you’re unfamiliar with Noé’s work, I’ll give you a rundown of the kind of stories and content you can expect to find. Arguably his most famous film, Irreversible, is about a woman’s rape and the subsequent revenge her lover takes on the man who did it. But the movie’s story is told in reverse, and the violence–both vengeful and sexual–are graphic and protracted. Another movie of his, Enter the Void, is a psychedelic look at reincarnation and incest that’s told from the first person and then the third person as a dead man’s spirit looks for a moment in time to reincarnate (spoiler, it’s in his sister’s womb). His most recent film before this, Love, features unsimulated sex, some of it in 3d, some of it from…creative perspectives.

So that’s Gaspar Noé. If you read any of those descriptions and were, understandably, upset or turned off by what you read, I think the review kind of ends here. Some kinds of film are like sushi. It’s either a huge treat or disgusting and potentially poisoning–sometimes all of the above. In this way I’d say Noé’s work is the Unagi of sushi movies. It’s slimy and weird, but if well-prepared, it’s pretty nourishing.

If you do decide to continue, I’d like to give a spoiler and trigger warning in one fell swoop. The movie deals with some pretty horrific things, and while I think it’s well-made, I also think the best way I can “review” it is to recount some of what happens, and you can decide if it’s your thing. If it’s not, no harm no foul. There’s a lot of movies out there to see. I’ll also give a “Sammie can get pretentious!” warning, although maybe my Alita: Battle Angel review is warning enough.

First off, the movie starts at the end. We watch from a God’s–eye–perspective as a dancer stumbles into deep white snow, writhing in it and laughing in what could either be ecstasy or pain. We then watch the end credits, after which Noé flashes a message in French onscreen. I believe the message is “Life is a selfish act.” These are the two bookended ideas of the movie–Life is a selfish act; Death is an extraordinary experience.

We then watch interviews with the various dancers. There’s a lot of them; the movie reminds me in a lot of ways of The Thing and The Hateful Eight where we are introduced to an enormous ensemble and their collective suffering is almost a larger player in the movie than any given character. Unlike The Thing and The Hateful Eight, there’s no Kurt Russell, though the closest thing in the movie bearing a resemblance to The Thing’s Kurt Russell/Keith David situation might be Sofia Boutella’s and Sharleen Temple’s characters. The interview itself is on a tube television surrounded by allusions to Noé’s influences. Notable movies on the shelf are Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, and Dario Argento’s Supiria. Suspiria’s influence in the lighting is felt greatly in this movie (and all of Noé’s work, really).

A couple exchanges in these interviews stand out. One being when a dancer is asked what is in heaven. He replies “all things good.” Another is asked where he comes from, and he says “hell.” What is hell, the interviewer asks. The dancer indicates the walls of the dance studio behind him.

We are then treated to the actual beginning of the film, which is an insanely polished and choreographed 10-minute single shot. There are no edits, only motion and precision, yet the air of realism that the movie is going for is not sacrificed in the numerous takes and rehearsals they must have needed to achieve the scene’s level of polish. We feel like some disembodied spirit that is watching these dancers enjoy their party, ostensibly celebrating their final night at the studio before they go on the road.

“God is here!” Sofia Boutella’s character, Selva, declares.

The dancing and motion of the camera were so transporting that for a moment I forgot that we were in for a wild, disturbing ride. Seriously, if you’re on the fence about this movie and if it ever comes to streaming, just watch this 10-minute sequence. It’s really well done. There is an aspect of heaven itself in this, everyone is moving in rhythm, everyone has a moment in the spotlight, everyone seems to love each other and feel bonded by a common purpose.

It has all things good.

And that’s partially what’s so unnerving about the beginning sections of the movie. You know things are about to go horribly wrong–not only because this is a Gaspar Noé movie, but because you probably know the plot: Sangria is served at this party and it has been laced with LSD. And almost everyone–including a child disobeying his mother’s orders–has some. The dancing and dialoguing continues, and we wait. We don’t know (until film’s end) who poisoned the Sangria, and we don’t know when it will kick in.

During the movie’s only slow section, which is propelled by the mounting dread of what will happen, we watch various dancers pair off and talk smack about each other. Everyone’s been in close quarters for so long, everyone’s horny, everyone’s sick of each other, and everyone has shade or desire for someone else. Sometimes both.

And then the LSD hits, and boy does it hit.

Part of what makes it horrifying is you’re not seeing what those affected are seeing. For being lit in OG Supiria shades of saturated blue, red, and green, the movie’s look at drug-addled dancers is horrifically objective. Someone screams and then giggles. Another begins scratching themselves furiously. Someone else pees on the floor. And people immediately begin pointing fingers. One man has declined to drink. They reason he must be the one who poisoned them. He is thrown out into the cold to freeze to death.

Thus begins the devolution of the society the dancers create. “God” quickly disappears as it becomes clear no one is in charge. The boy sneaks another sip of sangria and his hallucinating mother desperately locks him in a closet, telling him not to touch the high voltage electrical box on the wall inside. She then loses the key. Throughout the movie we hear the boy’s screams. A woman reveals that she is pregnant. She is the one other person not to have had the sangria. She is brutally kicked by a livid dancer. Another person’s hair catches fire, and in their state there is not the wherewithal to stop, drop, and/or roll.

Soon, the power goes out, and it is clear why. All is now red. Heaven has become hell.

Watching this movie I was reminded of Nietzche’s principle of the Apollonian and the Dionysian in art. I have no doubt when he coined the principle he thought using those polysyllabic Greek superhero names made it accessible, but it does not. I will attempt to simplify: Art is both sculpted and sculptor, drink and drinker, consciousness and drunkenness. And while it is joyous to make art, it is sometimes more joyous to take part in it. If I am a solitary man in a prison drawing a grand mountain vista, I am most likely envious of my own art, for I can see it and envision it, but I am not there. Contrast this with my experience as a man in said mountain vista, unaware of all the others in solitary confinement envying my position. I am ignorant but also engaged. I am enraptured but also addled by the thin air, the mountain fauna, the experience itself.

I am in the art. And it is dangerous.

I think something similar is going on in Climax, and that’s why I like it so much. I don’t enjoy seeing a pregnant woman beaten or a child hallucinating in a closet on LSD and subsequently electrocuting himself to death, but the movie has remained with me, and that is a good sign. We are seeing a new idea creeping into art, which I saw first in The House That Jack Built when Jack is discussing how lights appear bright to us, but our photo negatives reveal the opposite: Good and evil, heaven and hell, light and dark, they are both sides of the same coin, and can be experienced in a similarly poignant and often sublime way.

Not everyone reading this review has been to church (nor should everyone), but I have been to church, and I have experienced the Dionysian rapture that the worship segment of a service is attempting to generate. It cannot be manufactured, only found, and the one who manufactures it the most often enjoys it the least. This is then followed by the Apollonian drone of the preacher, explaining what we felt and why we felt it and why we should feel it. Climax does this but recognizes the Apollonian only needs a few sentences, and having any more drains a subject of meaning. Life is a selfish act. Death is an extraordinary experience. This is why we saw what we saw.

I have seen that Noé was looking to challenge the idea that death is always a bad thing. I think he pulled that off. The child was neglected by his mom. The man thrown out was the most innocent of the group. He froze to death in a fetal position. We are so conditioned as evolutionary creatures whom in our hubris created society that we have come to mythologize life and death in often unfair ways. We say good people should live and bad people should die. But that isn’t the case at all. Some of the most wonderful people I know have experienced horrible suffering. There’s no real reason for it. It just happens, and maybe that’s…it feels wrong to say it’s okay. Indeed, it’s offensive to say that it’s okay. It doesn’t feel okay to me.

But maybe it is. Maybe life, in the end, is a dance, and maybe dance, in the end, is simply motion. And in this world, we know perpetual motion is impossible. Some philosophers even believed and still believe life and motion are illusions. Maybe you just keep going until you stop going. Thinking that way isn’t always functional. But the very concept of functionality is based on staying alive. And staying alive can often become this restrictive dance that we force others to take part in. We point fingers and deny people experiences and freedoms, or force people to take part in things against their will. We claim others’ bodies as our own–our own for pleasure, our own for work with the justification of wages. Society is built upon people living with no regard for their well-being or sanity.

And that’s kind of selfish. And when you die, you’re free of that. And that’s kind of extraordinary.

A braver person would end the review there, but I’d like to add a closing thought. David Hayter, screenwriter of The Mummy and voice actor of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid video game series, recently made a video in the character of Snake, as though he was on an important codec call during a mission.

“Colonel,” he growls in Snake’s voice. “I’m trying to sneak around, but I’m dummy thicc–and the clap from my ass cheeks keeps alerting the guards.”

This has nothing to do with the movie, but it cheers me up considerably.

A