The police riot technique Gaspar Noé used in ‘Irreversible’
Throughout his career, Gaspar Noé has delivered controversial, even provocative, works of cinema, including Enter the Void, Love and Climax. However, few of the Argentine-Italian director’s movies have proven to be quite as infamous as his 2002 art thriller film Irreversible, starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel.
The film, told in reverse order via 13 segments made to look like long takes or continuous shots, tells of a tragic occurrence in Paris as two men try to avenge the rape of a woman they love. The performances of the actors were praised upon release, but Noé himself was criticised for his graphic portrayal of violence and rape, leading many to consider the film unwatchable.
While Irreversible is certainly remembered for its narrative controversies, it also contains a series of inventive filmmaking techniques by Noé. One of the most significant moments in the film’s infamous nightclub scene is when the director adds a low-frequency noise to create a state of anxiety in its audience amid the already tense proceedings.
“Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk) and I made it as if there were two different tracks playing at two different levels, which often happens in a club,” Noé once explained in an interview with Salon. “Then we added 27 Hz of infrasound – a low-frequency sound which the police use to stop riots.”
He added: “You can’t hear it, but it makes you shake. In a good theatre with a subwoofer, you may be more scared by the sound than by what’s happening on the screen. A lot of people can take the images but not the sound. Those reactions are physical.”
This insight into the film’s infamous scene begins to explain why more than 250 audience members walked out of its screening at Cannes, and a further 20 of them required oxygen from emergency services after fainting. Cannes audiences are known to walk out on controversial films, but the actual fainting instances likely come down to Noé’s use of low-frequency sound.
Irreversible is already a difficult watch and imbued a deep sense of unseated anxiety within its viewers just from its extremely dark story. However, by using a series of filmmaking techniques, Noé created an ingenious work of cinema rather than a merely provocative one. The film also features camera work of a disorientating nature that makes Irreversible even more intentionally challenging to watch.
Explaining this other technique, Noé noted, “By shaking the camera with my hands. The actors were screaming, fighting and running, and I was doing the same thing with the camera. Mostly I was not putting my eye behind the viewer. If you direct yourself, you have more fun with the camera. Sometimes when directors frame their own movies, they make it look more weird.”
Check out the trailer for Irreversible below.
