I Stand Alone, Dix Ans Après

This may sound a bit odd, and perhaps to dissenters out there, a little sick, but I miss Gaspar Noé.

The French enfant terrible who helmed one of the greatest pictures of the 1990’s, I Stand Alone, and who placed Monica Bellucci in a situation that angered even those OK with Susan George’s episode in Straw Dogs, has been absent from the screen far too long. Yes, he’s made a short for the sexually explicit Destricted project, and yes there are the condom commercials from years back, but Mr. Noé needs another full length feature under his (whipping) belt.

The director, heavily influenced by '70s cinema, William Castle shock-a-tude, pornography, Godard, Céline, Nietzsche and (as I have argued, whether he knows this or not), even Thomas Hardy, was the great Gallic hope for a new generation of savage filmmaking. Unlike some current filmmakers who traffic in mere shock, or art house directors striking a transgressive pose, Noé is a genuine artist, but unpretentious -- a man who loves nothing more than upsetting his audience (or, in the case of Irreversible, making some faint), while injecting his screaming compositions with substantive thought, intelligence and philosophy.

So hearing that Noé will be directing a new picture (Enter the Void) got me all excited, and in the mood to re-visit his debut blast of brilliance, ten years later, 1998’s I Stand Alone.  This is the movie that caused a daily critic to walk out during the screening I attended, this is the movie that bonded me with my sister (long story), and this is the film that I told a colleague to see on a date. That advice didn’t work out so well.

When first reviewing the blisteringly brilliant picture, I quoted an anecdote by director Paul Schrader. Schrader said:

“I had an interesting lunch recently with a French director named Gaspar Noé who wanted to do a film with me, something with violence and pornography and all that. And I said to him, 'I don't think anyone's shockable anymore.'"

Now I admire, sometimes revere Paul Schrader, and I would probably agree with him at that moment, but with I Stand Alone (and the latter Irreversible) he was positively wrong.  For Noé had not only made one of the most shocking pictures in decades, but also one of the most stylistically impressive, emotionally challenging, thematically intimidating, astoundingly touching and, in its own warped way, weirdly funny. I Stand Alone, or Seul Contre Tous (Alone Against All) is a hair grabber that drags you around the muck and pushes your face into its world so far that -- and this is rare with such hard cinema -- you’ll experience moments of such bizarre, hideous beauty that you’re left significantly moved. It attacks one's senses with such transgressive power that by its end, one feels flustered, simultaneously full and empty. I Stand Alone rattles in your brain long after the movie's disquieting end. 

As I mentioned before, with nods to Céline, Dostoevsky, Schrader, Godard and even William Castle, I Stand Alone chronicles, as the film's titles claim, the "tragedy of a jobless butcher struggling to survive in the bowels of his nation." As the picture opens, the nameless butcher's entire life is inventively, humorously revealed via a slideshow. It describes how a French World War II orphan became a butcher, and is sent to prison after stabbing a guy he thought raped his daughter. The movie jettisons us to 1980 and into the head of said butcher (embodied magnificently by Philippe Nahon), who, now released from prison, is living an emasculated life with his pregnant girlfriend and her obtrusive mother in a depressing housing tract in France. His current domestic predicament only escalates his alienation and rage, feelings made clear in angry interior monologues that grow more bile-ridden as the film continues (the man, like the film, isn't subtle). When his refusal (or inability) to smile causes him to lose a job at a supermarket deli (have we felt this? I sure have), the butcher becomes a night watchman at a home for the elderly, where in one stirring moment, he assists a woman's euthanization. Afterwards, he visits a porn theater and, during a hardcore penetration close-up, he muses inwardly, "If you're a cock, you gotta stay hard to be respected; [otherwise] your only role and purpose is to be reamed." (Oh Gaspar, you're such a romantic! Sigh).

Soon after, he argues bitterly with his mistress and, in one of the film's most brutal moments, beats her, kicking her pregnant stomach (this is when the aforementioned female critic left the theater). This sick underbelly we have witnessed with amusement and detachment has, now, in fact been literally reamed. And it is at this point, that the film's existential loathing gives us our first challenge: The man we felt immediate sympathy for, the cantankerous oldster who has made us laugh with his stark philosophical observations, has finally committed a sickening act of violence. And he doesn't regret it. Confronting his modern audience, hardened from years of on-screen violence, Noé essentially asks: How do you like your underground hero now? Are you still cheering him on?

Somehow, in many ways, we are -- which points to the film's mind spinning, confusing power. With dwindling money, no job prospects and a gun, the butcher grows increasingly disgruntled over everything -- class, race, love, sexuality -- and his thoughts become both clear-headed and garbled. In the hands of a more simplistic filmmaker, this could be tedious or predictable. Noé , however, is not here just to shock. Like Taxi Driver, I Stand Alone represents a national reflection, here it’s France entering the 1980’s, personifying such unease with an unrelenting, furious protagonist. And Noé crafts a film that is so aesthetically violent--sharp gunshot sounds are used as jarring, disarming tangents, illustrating a shift in scenery or thought--that it’s surprising to realize just how little blood is actually shed onscreen. The movie deals almost entirely in thoughts of violence, rather than acts. The butcher rattles on about this or that problem, but mostly remains stuck in states of fantasy or inertia.  But he is so potently angry and the filmmaking so unyieldingly ferocious, it simply feels violent.

And Noé never slips once in this assault, even testing the viewer’s typical film sensibilities. In the picture's most infamous moment, a title card flashes on screen and cautions: “You Have 30 Seconds to Leave the Cinema.” It's a bold move, one filled with humor and horror (one part Godard, one part Castle), and despite the shocking images and words that come before it, Noé manages to back up that warning with a sequence that sent my emotions into a tailspin of sadness, distress and an unsettling amount of confusing compassion (you just have to see the ending).  I Stand Alone is true savage cinema -- a grim, exciting, nerve-wracking work of art that doesn’t just stick in your brain, but finds a way to get all five fingers up there too. Seul Contre Tous? Sous le soleil exactement, Mr. Noé.

Comments

[Pete_Bogs]

Irreversible is actually a terrific movie, for those who can stomach it… having some of the worst parts up front made the final (i.e. earlier in the day) scenes all the more eloquent… Monica Bellucci spending intimate time with her lover, and giving him that special news, etc.… I don’t recommend it to many, but I do have an immense respect for it myself… the multiple meanings of the title interest me: showing the film in reverse sequence… knowing that all that has happened (including a well-meaning revenge attack on possibly the wrong man) can never be undone… bleak, in your face, and unforgettable…

your references to Castle are spot-on, Kim… I wonder if Noé ever made trailers for his films where he uses phrases like “Medical personnel will be standing by at the theatre” or “no one will be seated during the last 10 shocking minutes?”

[Sean O'Hara]

This is a great movie to show to guys who like to pretend they're jaded by horror movies and can't be shocked. But I feel ookie about recommending it (or Irreversible) to anyone else.

[Editor A]

I've been a huge fan of Seul Contre Tous since it came out, and I was excited to see someone else posting about it. It should have gotten more attention after Irreversible but it seems to stand quietly behind in the shadows.

I saw Irreversible here in L.A. with Noé in person and he said it was kind of a working out of ideas for his next film-- that it was more of an experiment! Wow, quite an experiment, although I did feel that it was less (thematically I guess?) than he had worked with on Seul Contre Tous.

Coincidentally I was just thinking to myself the other day how long a wait it's been since he teased that information. So I'm enthused to hear you say he's got a new film coming. Who knows if it's even the one he had been planning to do. Maybe he never got that off the ground. (By the way, don't quote my account of that Egyptian Theatre screening. My memory is pretty faulty sometimes.)

-Editor A

[Howie]

Irreversible was ok, but i really hated I Stand Alone. It was so lame. You have funny taste. You like the anti-art films like Pink Flamingoes and Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, yet you also like the very films a guy like John Waters would hate. I Stand Alone being a perfect example.

[k]

Not sure how John Waters felt about "I Stand Alone" but he loved "Irreversible." He rated it his number one movie of 2003:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_1995_August_30/ai_111696411

[J]

SNAP!

[Justin]

John Waters personally picked "I Stand Alone" to play at the 2003 Maryland Film Festival (where "Irreversible" also played before hitting the market).

[JosephB]

I saw "I Stand Alone" quickly after reading the praise for it in Film Comment, and was fascinated by it. I'll never forget the dread that builds not only with the inclusion of that infamous title card, but of the scenes after that as well as the stream-of-consience voiceover that punctuates so much of the film. I admire Noe as a director and can't wait for his latest. Great spotlight on him, Kim.