Picture it! It is Thursday night. You want to see three movies, work full time and have a busy work day ahead of you tomorrow, but you are also running on little sleep. Choose the wrong movie, and you’ve paid money to sleep in a theater. Stay home and be a responsible adult, and you have less time to see the movies. I chose to go out and saw the right movie. You will never fall asleep during Climax.
Climax is Gasper Noe’s latest film. Noe’s best known film is Irreversible, and in comparison, Climax is tame. It is the first time that I saw one of his films on the big screen. People call it a horror movie because it can be horrifying, but I would not necessarily classify it as such. I am comfortable calling it a tame version of New French Extremism, which is very close to torture porn in terms of being graphic, but has a social, sexual and psychological component that violates most unspoken codes of conduct for films and life. Imagine if you lived in a world where not only did people not follow the rules, but it is as if the rules suddenly never existed.
The benefit or drawback of seeing a New French Extremism film on the big screen is that you don’t have any way to escape. You’re in a theater fully immersed in the experience so you can’t pause the film, watch it in the day, see it in small doses. Sure you can leave, but then you won’t find out what happened. Also if you live in a home with viewers whom this type of movie would not be suitable, better to see it on the big screen and shield them from even hearing the nonstop screams that dominate the audio in the second half. Another benefit is gauging your fellow viewers’ reaction. Men are particularly expressive and shocked during these types of films. Women seem to hold up better with occasional glances at their phones if it takes too long to get to the destination. After Climax, one man exclaimed, “I’ve never wanted to go to church more than I do right now! My father would be so happy now. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.”
Climax is about a dance troupe celebrating after rehearsal when someone spikes the drinks. The group completely fractures, and individuals gradually descend into fear, paranoia and madness with most interactions proving disastrous although some find a sloppy solace to get through the shocking experience. For most, it is not a good trip. It takes place in one location during the winter of 1996 and is allegedly based on a true story according to Noe, but outside of interviews with the director, I can’t find any information on the origins of the story.
Climax is the kind of film that you simultaneously want to see again and never see again. Most reviews divide the movie into two parts, but I think that it is an oversimplification of what Noe did. It is a movie with three to four beginnings and two endings—the first beginning is also an ending. Noe is experimenting with film structure in a way that I found really interesting because it results in a narrative experiment as well that largely succeeds. He finds a way to get us invested in twenty-four characters and know them well enough to see the transformation of their personality although some are more memorable than others. Initially I thought that he was using the how we got here trope by showing a scene from the end of the story first and was instantly turned off because I despise this overused trope until he took the narrative device to its extreme and showed the end credits first with a simple, elegant visual parallel between the surrounding environment and the screen. I’ll eagerly sign a waiver. Brilliant and beautiful.
I want to see the second and third beginnings of Climax again. The second beginning is a close up of an old school television surrounded by stacks of books and VHS tapes. The television is playing interviews with all the dancers. I’d love to watch those interviews again now that I know what happens to them and see how they measure up to their view of themselves. The third beginning features a superb dance sequence, which shows the troupe at the height of themselves as a group and individuals. The dancing is phenomenal throughout the film even as they devolve. The movie is littered with extended, long takes, and the cameraperson is artfully dancing through the group and following one character then another as the movie unfolds. As long as the camera is dynamic, the movie is generally strong and produces a strong empathy with the characters because it makes the viewer feel as if he or she is weaving in and out of the crowd.
During the first static sequences, which features people chatting with each other in groups of threes or twos during the party and innocently imbibing the spiked beverage, Climax hits its first obstacle. Only one of the members of the cast is an actor, Sofia Boutella, whom I stand for, and she is one of the main reasons that I wanted to see this film. The rest is improvised, and while the overall story is better than most movies with professional writers who have spent years devoted to this craft, it still is not the most scintillating repertoire to listen to and often eye roll worthy. Please start dancing again.
When chaos ensues, it is fairly realistic and not that sensationalized. The camerawork reflects the dancers’ mental state and gradually gets more distorted in terms of perspective and angle choices. I found myself instinctually tilting my head to compensate for the change. It was very hard to not do so and look at the images on screen as intended. People do awful things fairly early, but it is nothing so unbelievably outrageous as becoming Buffalo Bill and suddenly being very artful with a weapon. Just when you think that you understand how bad things get, people start getting startled by wallpaper or their face in a mirror. They lose the capacity to communicate even negative feelings and are reduced to the physical. So when people call it a horror film, it was not that scary for me because no one is deliberately doing anything, but it is supposed to be disturbing to see these people lose control and themselves. I suppose that I’m awfully jaded from years of movie going and life because my imagination was far worse. At least it wasn’t bath salts.
Violence is spontaneous and rapid then quickly subsides because concentration is apparently fairly impossible, and it is hard to string actions together to do anything constructive or destructive in a deliberate, effective manner. Unfortunately even with the arresting images of individual Sartre hells, that can get boring and numbing after awhile even with the amazing composition, lighting and soundtrack. Because of the distortion, it is also hard to tell what has happened to some characters so I would love someone to summarize each character’s entire story so I won’t have to see it again. After awhile, I just wanted the movie to end already.
Climax promised to be about a group of dancers who are drugged, and I got a group of dancers who were drugged so it delivered what it promised. I can’t fault the movie because the trip went on longer than I would have liked. They never asked for it to be that long either, and it is probably the point. I would not recommend this movie to anyone who is easily shocked because while I found it tame, if you’re not accustomed to New French Extremism, you will probably leave the theater screaming like that young man. I may pay full price just to see the beginning again or wait to see it at home, but just the beginning. It would pair wonderfully with the remake of Suspiria.