Greetings my friends, how are we bearing up with the current crisis’s? Everything has gone pear shaped what with the strikes, the climate, the covid, the government in general, and the war as well as the petrol & the nuclear power, and that’s just the start of it! 

So anyhow, I finally got to see the film Enter the Void at the weekend, I bought it 2nd hand off eBay a couple of months ago, having seen a little bit of it on tv, I had it in the back of my mind to check it out at some point. It’s by that Gaspar Noé, he did the film Irreversible – which was so violent and outrageous, even I didn’t see it for about a decade, I just thought no, I’ll stick with Star Wars & Sound of Music etc for now. Anyhow, I saw that a while ago, and while the sex & violence were extreme, by todays standards it wasn’t so shocking as it was when it came out.

Anyway, Enter the Void isn’t full of violence or shocks particularly, oh yeah, he (Gaspar Noé) also did the film Climax, which I saw on tv a while ago, it’s about dance – and LSD, yes, it’s a bit odd, but very interesting, a bit like a treat for the psychologists, because you know how interpretive dance is like one of the deepest & most direct forms of human expression? Well it’s interesting anyhow, but what if someone spiked their drink with LSD? Well, it has to be explored doesn’t it? Surely?? 

Anyway, I enjoyed both those movies, so I thought it’s about time I got hold of Enter the Void and watched it, so I got this copy, and pressed play – it was in German, so I was reading subtitles, and I thought, why is this in German? So I tried pressing various buttons to sort it out, to no avail, so in the end I emailed the seller and said I wanted the English version, not the German one. So the guy comes back and tells me how to sort that out, and how to read the German menu & change it to English, and he was right! It worked! 

So, a few more weeks went by and I thought ok, I’m ready to give it another go – so I pressed play, and it’s in German again, so I press the thing & it doesn’t give me any options, so I’m thinking ok, maybe it’s partly in German, & the English bits will be later? So I settle down to watch in German, and I’m about 25 mins into it, and I’m thinking, this movie should definitely be in English, I mean is it partly German or not? I don’t mind reading subtitles, but it does take your eye off the details, so I press pause & Google the movie & it says it’s an English language film! So I fire up the computer & find the email from the eBay guy a few months back, follow the instructions and boom! Back to English! It was the buttons on the remote letting me down, batteries flat.

So I finally get into it, and it does go on a bit, I started watching about midnight, and by about 3am, I was thinking when is this going to end? I wanted to go to the loo, I’d not been for ages, and what with all the pauses to get the right language and everything, so I looked it up & it’s like 2.25 hrs or whatever, but I must have got the directors extended cut or something cos I was already well past that point – so I noted where I’d got to for reference, and scrolled forward, and there was still loads to go, so I was like screw this, I’m off to bed. I watched the rest of it the following night, it was good, I enjoyed it!

The Spoilers:

This film is about a guy who dies, after a shooting, he’s a drug dealer, so you think he’s gonna die from an overdose, so it was clever to avoid that – we all know drugs are dangerous, right kids? So, as it happens, he’s been reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is actually a very interesting book, oh yes, I read it myself many years ago, totally bonkers most of it, but like all these ancient religions, it’s no doubt garnered from experiences people had in their lives & legends and so on, so this theory goes that if you die, you go into The Void, the afterlife, or lack of, it’s about what you may or may not experience, or expect to find after death, it’s the Void of course, nothingness, no existence, but who knows, does memory survive? Do feelings? And for how long? Seconds? Hours? Days? Does a second become an eternity? Well I dunno do I? it’s all rather interesting, then you got the whole reincarnation thing, so there’s a lot of people having sex in this film, and we’re told the only people who understand or are close to the Void, are those making love, it’s because if they conceive, that’s how people come into the world, (from the Void), and that’s it really, it’s like revolving door, people are forever dying and people are forever being born, if you die, you Enter the Void, and if you’re born, you came out of it, who’s to say it’s not simply reincarnation? It’s like a door, you go through it, and you’re in a different place, over here in our culture, if you die, you go into the ground, what’s so great about that? You’re expected to just lay there, all year round, through wind and snow, half frozen, just waiting for ressurection – or whatever – we got ghosts in this country been waiting for hundreds and hundreds of years, just wondering what happens next,  but over there, if you haven’t made it to the next dimension in like, a few days or a week, you’re reincarnated, and really, that’s that! Pretty sci-fi & far out imo!

Also in the film, it’s quite sad about the tragedy of young people & dangerous drugs, I mean if you’re older, and someone says “hey, have you tried DMT? It’s really great, you might think you’re dead already!” Well if you’re older, you probably just say, well it’s interesting, but I’m actually a bit busy tonight, so you go ahead & I’ll leave it, let me know how it works out ok? But young people, well they’re curious, and they want to know about things, they actually go out of their way looking for crazy things to explore, well some of them anyhow, when they had their fill, they go, well, that’s enough now, I’m gonna take something else up now, cos I’m not bonkers – but not all of them do, some push it too far, and that’s the kind of thing you get in the film, it’s very well done, I recommend it, the film I mean, not the drug taking and tripping the light fantastic!