3. Enter The Void
Wild Bunch
The Drug: DMT Love him or loathe him, it's impossible to deny that Gaspar Noe is one of few directors working today who truly attempts to break new boundaries in cinematic expression; not just in his delirious camerawork but also in his approach to structure, deconstructing the way in which films can be pushed beyond the conventions of storytelling towards something vital and removed from associations with other forms of art. Enter the Void is a bold attempt at delivering a movie truly unlike anything seen before. It is this quality which has so divided people, its refusal to play by the cinematic rules we're all familiar with in most of the films we watch. After taking a few hits of DMT and going on an intense but brief trip into another dimension, a young American in Tokyo called Oscar heads out for a drug deal where he winds up shot by police. The rest of the movie - a good two hours remaining - takes place largely with the camera representing his disembodied point of view as his consciousness leaps out of his body and witnesses moments from the past, present and future. For Noe, Enter the Void might be about "the sentimentality of mammals and the shimmering vacuity of the human experience," but the film's mesmerising effect more than compensates for this pessimistic worldview.