How Far Would We Go For The Ultimate Perfect Thing

What brought me to this subculture I cannot say. It is probably somewhere inside me, the urge to push the limits, to see how far I can go. To see how much I can take before I break down, before I say STOP before I realize that nothing can shock me, make me feel uneasy, irritate me or even make me physically sick. Yes, Im talking about movies.
It started when I was a kid, secretly sneaking to movie theaters to see The Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Alien saga or other jewels like that. I would watch all different kind of horror movies. You name it, I have most likely seen it. My taste was not unified, I never had it just for fifties u.s. horrors, Italian zombie flicks, Japanese ghost in long white night gowns and long hair, European vampires etc. I would simply watch and somehow absorb everything.
Then I started to look further and discovered so called gore genre. Starting with Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox, going through all the Guinea Pig series, Man Behind The Sun, Scrapbook, I Spit On Your Grave, August Underground series… I have seen it all. Those movies continued where regular horror movies stopped, showing everything in detail, sometimes unnatural, sometimes truly sickening. But when you watch movies like that, you see few of them and its like you have seen everything.
Here I just add (wonder what Freud would say to this ;) ) that at the time when I was watching absolutely the goriest movies I was in a very happy relationship with a very sweet guy and I did not suffer of any complexes, wasn’t stressed or depressed, overall I was in a very happy state of mind. Which actually might explain a lot….But yes, those years when I was sitting on GP series or watching August Underground Mordum were happy days. As perverse and sick as it sounds, I insist.
What was missing was the point. Oh yes, the point of those movies was to shock mass audience, to provoke, to make you stop thinking. There you go and watch. All the ultra violence, massacres, rape, torture, fetishes… All was that, all pointless just for the sake of being there. Now don’t get me wrong, some of the gore cinema representatives were rather interesting, but overall, something was missing.
I was ready for something more sophisticated and that was the era when I was introduced to Pier Paolo Pasolini and his “Salo”. It shocked me, it scared me and I wasn’t able to think of anything else then the movie for the next month or so. I had the movie images in my head, asking my self thousand times “what if” and my head was going into overdrive, because it was something new.
Takashi Miike became soon one of my favourites with his “Visitor Q” (an excellent Japanese “remake” of Passolinis “Teorema”) closely followed by “Oodishon”.
Michael Haneke with “Funny Games” and super beautiful and maybe-not-so-much-out-of-crowd perverted “The Piano teacher”.
Lars van Trier with “Dancer in the dark”, “Dogville” and “Antichrist”
Shinya Tsukamoto and his “Tetsuo” seeing his inspiration in Jan Svankmajers work.
Gaspar Noe with “I stand alone” and “Irreversible”
Everybody has been talking about Triers “Antichrist” lately. By prudes branded as a nasty pornography (close up of Ms.Gainsborough clitoris plus mutiliation of testicles, close up of sexual acts), by many critics highly acclaimed peace of art. Movie that was said it was to be unbearable to watch (but on the other hand, so were most of the movies I mentioned in this section, lets all remember the famous “Salo” feast scene and the fact that the movie has been banned in most of the countries in the world for longer then 20 years).
Well what Im trying to say that I very much enjoy watching such a movies. Movies that push the limits, movies that make me think, movies where each act and each scene have its reasons. Movies where gore and violence and perversities have their very right reason. I love exploring the unknown, I like searching for something I have never seen before. Experiencing that kind of fear and intimidation, together with curiosity and I would even dare to say an excitement.

And just for the final (and what was actually the reason why I wrote this blog), recently I have seen “Enter The Void” = a new Gaspar Noe film. I honestly don’t know what to say or what to do now. It was the strongest experience ever, compared to this movie “Antichrist” is a harmless kids movie. Maybe now I have seen it all, because I truly cannot imagine what could beat this. But you would need to know yourself . Try to watch it (well don’t watch it if you are easily offended by movies with drug users, violence, graphic sex scenes, graphic gay sex scenes, detailed car crashes and if you suffer of epilepsy).