I just...I don't...What?I woke up this fine Thanksgiving morning and thought "let's start the day off right with a French horror movie." Christy came out about forty minutes in, looked at the TV, looked at me, and I had to tell her I had no idea what was actually happening.
There is an optional introduction by the director, Pascal Laugier, that will do nothing to inspire confidence about what you are going to watch. He basically apologizes for making something fucked up and is okay if you hate it and him, because sometimes he hates it too. I had heard that this is so hard to watch that it basically defines the genre of torture porn. I don't know if I'd go that far. I've seen way more horrific things.
Despite all this, for what it is, it totally works as a film. Once it reveals its central concept, at around the halfway mark, it's pretty straightforward. No less fucked up, but straightforward. If I tell you any more I think it might ruin it for you. I'm already kind of doing a terrible job of describing it. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting but I found that I kind of enjoyed where I ended up. Even with the torture.
I just don't know if I could be a party to my own destruction. As the movie will tell you, martyr comes from Greek martyros, meaning witness. That is a passive act, an allowance of a state of affairs to come to pass without action. The movie tests the characters' endurance, so much that they transcend their torment and are transformed by the experience. I don't know that I could allow someone else to determine that course for me. Call it innate stubbornness but I think I would fight tooth and nail, just from spite if nothing else.
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