Hacker Cinema
Enter the Void
2010 · Film · 161 min
Directed by Gaspar Noé
This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
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16 comments on Hacker News
I was wondering how these kind of scenes were done in the movie Enter The Void back in 2009. Maybe they used different technique but looks very similar: https://vimeo.com/60239415
So personally I like films that makes me feel something without that feeling being explicitly forced upon me. This is an incredible thing to achieve that only a select few directors can do. Not “baiting” the viewers into emotions but also not being cold at the same time. Just by showing and how do they show it. Like the case of “a picture is worth a thousand words”. It’s a razor thin line but that makes these films I enjoy special and sincere.
(I'll only mentions stuff from the 21st century because otherwise I'd sit here for days)
I love japanese cinema so I'm very biased towards films from there.
- The Taste of Tea (2004) from Katsuhito Ishii
- Nobody Knows (2004) from Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Tony Takitani (2004) from Jun Ichikawa
- Memories of Matsuko (2006) from Tetsuya Nakashima
- Departures (2008) from Yojiro Takita
- Still Walking (2008) from Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Tokyo Sonata (2008) from Kiyoshi Kurosawa
- One Million Yen Girl (2008) from Yuki Tanada
- Haru’s Journey (2010) from Masahiro Kobayashi
- Story of Yonosuke (2013) from Shuichi Okita
- Shoplifters (2018) from Hirokazu Kore-eda
- Drive My Car (2021) from Ryūsuke Hamaguchi
Two korean film I've really liked
- The Handmaiden (2016) from Park Chan-wook
- Pieta (2012) from Kim Ki-duk
A chinese film I've seen recently and it was pretty good
- Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) from Diao Yi-nan
Iranian films are incredibly good and crazy what they could make despite the situation there
- A Separation (2011) from Asghar Farhadi
- Taxi (2015) from Jafar Panahi
- The Salesman (2016) from Asghar Farhadi
- There Is No Evil (2020) from Mohammad Rasoulof
- My Favourite Cake (2024) from Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha
Some european films I've enjoyed
- Enter the Void (2009) from Gaspar Noé
- Leviathan (2014) from Andrey Zvyagintsev
- Alcarràs (2022) from Carla Simón
- Fallen Leaves (2023) from Aki Kaurismäki
And last but not least some actual Hollywood films that I think are pretty good
- The Tree of Life (2011) from Terrence Malick
- Cloud Atlas (2012) from Lilly Wachowski and Lana Wachowski
- First Reformed (2017) from Paul Schrader
- Nickel Boys (2024) from RaMell Ross
It goes on my list of 'dreamlike' movies, they don't always fully add up consciously but you can feel your unconscious going into overdrive while watching them (or maybe there is a surface plot that mostly adds up, like EWS, but there is clearly something going on at a least one other level). The viewing experience is often downright hypnotic for me.
A few off the top of my head, this is a very personal list and I can't even claim that all these movies are 'good' in any particular sense. Just that they put me into this state: * basically anything in lynch's cannon. I'm not always the biggest fan of his stuff, but sometimes they hit me hard. * Cronenberg's Videodrome and it's spiritual sequel Existenz * Donnie Darko & Southland Tales (objectively just an awful movie) * Prince of Darkness * Enter the Void (not for the faint of heart) * Paprika * Solaris (the original mostly, there are some qualities in the remake) * Stalker * Dark City * Sorry to Bother You * The Fountain * 8 1/2 * The Ninth Gate * and certainly Eyes Wide Shut
This reminds me of "Enter the Void" a movie shot in first person where in one of the scenes the hero is having an acid trip
I've noticed for a while that Netflix seems to be making it a lot harder to rate content and find high quality content. It's like they want you to watch junk. Maybe junk has lower licensing fees so it increases their margins.
I've found some amazing gems digging through Netflix and relying on user ratings. They were films I probably never would have found otherwise. A few somewhat recent examples that come to mind are Enter the Void, The Discovery, Upstream Color, and A Dark Song.
Maybe you'll find more answers NOT with words but an inside talk, drugs are the faster option (or maybe you're dancing with diamonds and demons right now) but LSD aren't the healthier solution to a fast mind-expanded release... can be really traumatic without the right dose and life-style.
Have you ever seen those movies where UN-connected people being connected at the end?
"Enter The Void" by the director Gaspar Noe brings you an ancient idea or theory of how is death after live and the circle of life like Tibetans see, and one or maybe the most close-to-reality theories of death. At the beginning and before the chaos start (no important spoilers), a third actor says whats gonna happen in the all movie just by describing a resume of the book "The Tibetan Book of The Death" and this give you some interesting toughs about how para-psychology works. http://archiwum.radionafali.com/books/The%20Tibetan%20Book%20of%20the%20Dead.pdf [The book translated]
Shamanic drugs like Ayahuasca and magic-shrooms are really a powerful guide with to understand how life works, "para-psychology" after that seems like a fancy word to something too normal. Give a quick 30min read to this, the culture reading are so marvelously interesting... https://archive.org/details/SchultesHofmannPlantsOfTheGodsHealingArts2001 [Schultes, Hofmann (the same as the bike LSD squares!) "Plants Of The Gods"]
[!] You don't have to use drugs, drugs are so magical but so special and hard to control that you can have a really happy and wise life without them and just by informing yourself and open your mind every day a little more. (everything can be real.. )
Out there are more theories, the matrix, solipsism, you been your own good and everything is a reaction of your-self, etc.
what you're looking for are so beautiful, but be humble with the knowledge and careful.
Should we be investing any time at all in developing AI that is meant to make people happy or have a positive impact on the way people feel?
Have you seen the movie "enter the void"?
Would your opinion on this change after watching that movie?
> This reminds me of "Enter the Void".
I remember seeing that. It was a profoundly disturbing, unsettling experience. It's a good, well-made film, but what it portrayed was really scary.
Sure, that's great. Or I can meditate or do a ceremony and get a first-hand journey like that. Why watch a film?*
In Hyper-Reality, it's showing an experience where mainstream access to VR and AR gives mainstream access to some of the psychedelic experiences, and what that says about our civilization, and what's coming in the future. When I read the Wikipedia entry for "Enter the Void" does not seem as interesting to me.
* I do watch films like this. My point though isn't that Hyper Reality resembles a psychedelic experience, but that it gives us a glimpse of the future where pseudo-psychedelic consciousness shift is available in the mainstream, and part of the fabric of every day experience.
This reminds me of "Enter the Void". Both films are in first person, and draw emphasis to the difference between external reality and personal perception.
New "augmented reality" stuff is super interesting to me because it's basically the means of creating a shared illusion. So, like a drug trip, but more social and controlled. Basically like video games, but way larger in scale and social reach :)
Thoughts?
I have too many to list. Here are some of the highlights that come to mind.
2001: A Space Odyssey -- had a profound effect on me as a child. It both reinforced my interest in science and opened my mind to the sheer size and scale and mystery of the universe. The original Cosmos series did likewise, and I think it's far better than the remake with Tyson. Sagan just communicates the sense of awe and wonder a lot better.
Wargames -- definitely made an impression on my pre-teen self and helped get me into "hacking" (sense #2), which led here through a long and winding road.
Stand By Me -- a profound film about the end of childhood. (The Stephen King novella 'The Body' is good too, probably almost his best work.)
Primer -- the best sci-fi of the past decade. When you don't have a big budget to plaster FX all over the screen, it's got to be in the writing. Big budgets do sometimes ruin cinema.
Enter the Void -- this is a weird recent one that stuck with me. This is definitely a binary reaction film. I loved it, others hate it. It communicated the profound sense of loss that comes when you're forced to leave a thing unfinished and move on, followed by the sense of hope that comes with a new beginning. It was also just the visual aesthetic of that film. It haunts me. The artistic ethos of this film felt as if someone lifted dreams directly from my soul and rendered them on screen. Night flights over neon cities is probably what I'll dream about as I die.
These remind me of some of the scenes in the end of the movie "Enter The Void".
Enter The Void. A powerful parade of colors that takes you through the different stages of death. One does not simply watch this movie. One experiences it.
Enter the Void[1] was basically three hours of this. I enjoyed it, but it's definitely not for everyone.
[1]http://www.avclub.com/articles/enter-the-void,52931/
Here's part of my favorite comment on that article:
"The whole thing plays out like a video game cut scene that never ends, or a rail shooter in which the controller has stopped working; first person, limited third, floaty bits-- it seems to borrow a lot of gaming grammar for its visuals, intentional or no.
Old-timey comics used to throw around adjectives like "mindbending!" all the time. I think Enter the Void truly is, though. It ate my brain and shat it back out in my skull... and I think it gave me insomnia. It's either a weird, pretentious mess, or a goddamn masterpiece, but it's definitely worth seeing."
Enter the Void. Seeing it is like being tortured, but unlike many films I've found myself often thinking about it afterwards and not in a negative way. Still I can't bring myself to rewatch it completely. This film tries to do something new and doesn't tone it down one notch for the viewers.
I haven't read the book, but I've seen the new movie Enter the Void by Gaspar Noé, which pretends to be a kind of dramatization of the Tibetan post-death myth. One of the most unique films I've ever seen.