figured I'd repost my Martyrs review here:
Being an idiot, I watched this French horror film right before work the other day and lived to regret its gruesome images playing out in my mind over the course of a long shift.
Previously, I'd heard plenty about how horrifying and depressing it was; not much about what actually happens in it. I'm always leery of films that are touted as holding philosophical ambitions - a lot of the time, no good comes of this unless the director is a bona fide genius. Indeed, the philosophical angle of Martyrs is Georges Bataille-lite - his work The Tears of Eros could practically serve as an extended footnote to this film's main ideas, not least in that book's replication of a famous photograph also reproduced (and erroneously attributed) in the film - but the visual panache takes things further.
It's competently made and well-acted, though the actresses spend most of the film weeping (an achievement in itself - hard to induce that) or in a quasi-catatonic state. But the acting and directing aren't the real draw here, it's the visceral horror of the film. This one doesn't go quite as far as something like Wolf Creek in inciting existential panic in the viewer, but it gets pretty close. The ending strikes me a few different ways - it's a cop-out but the most appropriate ending for this scenario - it's anchored in semi-annoying ambiguity, but specifying would have led to a precise theodicy that doesn't really suit the cryptic tone of the film. Visually speaking, the film falls in an unexpectedly giallo vein - attractive girls running around and having to deal with awful things.
It's hard to reveal the plot, since this holds so many sudden twists and turns that a review really shouldn't discuss. Anyone who knows Bataille's arguments in the aforementioned Tears of Eros will have grasped the concept behind the film; indeed this amounts to an enactment of his thought far more successful than the likes of Ma Mere (as superficially enticing a film as that was). The movie seems to me to unfold in three stages or so - an opening sequence of trauma and supernatural horror somewhat reminiscent of Argento's Phenomena in its mingling of weird psychological states with similarly weird supernatural manifestations; the second bit, dealing largely with foreshadowing exposition of what'll eventually unfold, and the last half-hour or so, which is among the most extreme and disturbing passages of cinema I've ever witnessed. Coming from someone who's seen as many disturbing movies as me, that's a compliment.
The film opens with a young girl running down the street after escaping a brutal ordeal of torture, and delves into the question of precisely what happened to her and why (a mid-film shift from one protagonist to another is rewardingly disconcerting). Suffice to say that a scene involving "the final stage" of a particularly unpleasant physical ordeal, and its aftermath, is among the most unnerving (if implausible) things I've witnessed in a long time. The director is remaking Hellraiser, and he's more cut out for that than anyone else I've seen save maybe Alexandre Aja (the direction of this film is visually similar to the works of Aja I've seen, a similarity in which more stern critics than me might find room for objection, but I don't really care - the fluid camera-work and the lack of confusingly-edited sequences keep things moving).
French horror these days seems to lie along a couple of axes - we have the relatively cheap and stupid - if enjoyable - films such as Inside and Them, but then the really great stuff by the likes of Dumont, Denis, Breillat. I'm pretty certain that Pascal Laugier will never land in those ranks, but this film seems an intermediary between the two modes of intellectually-profound work and exploitation cinema.
That said, I need to watch this again to get a handle on it - the first time through, I was so caught up in anticipating the repulsive things guaranteed to happen that I might have overlooked whatever artistry lies there. Internet hype can be such a liability for these kinds of films - I remember how disappointed I was in things like Eden Lake and Strangers.
Anyway, I recommend this to anyone interested in extreme and compelling cinema, which represents at least some portion of my friends. Be warned, though - as someone who's sat through films like Salo and the aforementioned Wolf Creek with few qualms, I feel like this one will haunt me for much longer than those. If you like really extreme horror, watch this. If not, steer clear.
