Climax — Climax (Blu Ray)
Climax was made last year and was the fifth feature-length film from Noé- who wrote, directed & co-edited it. The film's plot finds a group of young French dancers going to an empty school building on a snowbound evening- someone puts LSD in their punch, and the film follows the group’s steady descent into paranoia, fear, and derangement.
It’s fair to say that Noé’s films very much divide people- some think he’s a mad cinematic genius- stretching both the levels of extreme imagery, film conventions and formal film structure. While others see him as an attention-grabbing shock miester, warping his work in arty pretension & film making gimmicks. I guess I’m somewhat on the fence- finding his past work certainly having worthy & interesting moments, but never really finding any one of his films wholly rewarding.
Climax is certainly the most approachable & commercial film Noé has made to date, and for most of its runtime things remain fairly coherent & normally structured in it’s unfolding. It all begins with us getting an effective above shot of someone crawling through virgin snow. The a series of dancers been interviewed on an old TV set- each one is separately interviewed about a new production; with the unseen interviewer asking, among other things how far they’d go to get fame- then we move into the school. The first half or so of the film sees a mix of fairly inane banter, and group dance session- normally filmed from above, or at a strange angle. The second half sees the group getting steadily more affected by the LSD that’s been put in the punch-we never see what they are seeing, we only see how they are externally affected, with the camera work steadily getting more floaty, upside down & off angle- and a greater use of different coloured filters as the chaos & the characters move from one room to the next.
And once again, as with his other work, I found elements here effective- while others not so- let's do the positives first: The dance sequence are certainly filmed in a very rewardingly different & unbalancing manner. There are from the midpoint some genuinely shocking & unsettling moments, and the last ten/ fifteen minutes are extremely deranged & disorientating - as we move from different colour light shifting rooms, with upside down & off-angle camera work as the group carry out all manner of depravity.
On the negative side- as with many ‘art’ films the pacing is often too slow- for example from the off the audition footage seems to last way too long, as the point that was trying to be made is made, but still, they drone on. The dance sequencers could really have done with a bit more variation & flare- and once again they did seem to drag in places. When ‘shit’ finally hits the fan it’s often difficult to discern what is the final outcome for a few of the characters, and really where the story stands- but I guess the last issue is downside of the trippy finale. so Climax hasn’t fully converted me to Noé- but there are more elements here that I enjoy more than in his past work, and the way it all unfolds in a fairly standard manner meant I didn’t need to think or analyse too deeply to what’s going on here.
I’ve read a few people complaining Climax wasn't as shocking in its use of violence & sexually imagery as his past work- and I guess that’s true, but this does get replaced with some fairly alarming scenarios that Noé really managers to intensify nicely- like when a small boy gets locked in a room, or when a supposable pregnant women is kicked & attacked.
Extra wise we get a good selection of stuff- we have a director’s commentary track from Noé- this sees him discussing how he came to the project, his love of dancing & dance music, actor choices, the 15 days filming of the project, musical selection, and what he’s trying to put across in certain scenes- it’s a worthy track, which gives one a good insight into both his mindset when making the film, and how he puts together his art. Next we have Shaman of the Screen: The Films of Gaspar Noé- this comes in around the thirty minute mark and finds Alexandra Heller-Nicholas discussing all of Noé- including his shorts, music videos, and of course his five feature films- this has a backdrop of footage from each discussed subject- all in all, this was most rewarding, and thankfully managed to mostly sidetrack pretentious dissections. Next we have Disco Infernal: The Sounds of Climax- an around twenty minute featurette from Genre critic & disco fan Alan Jones- this see him discussing each piece of music on the soundtrack- mostly this is worthy, though one does feel he’s slightly out of his depth when discussing the more experimental tracks. We get an eighteen-minute interview with Noé discussing the concepts behind Climax, we get a twenty-eight-minute featurette made up of interviews with the actors/ dancer. We get a short recent film from Noé called Shoot- which finds him turning his camera into a ball, we get two music videos he directed & a trailer.
While I can’t say I fully enjoyed the whole of Climax- it’s certainly one of Noé's films I enjoy more, and as mentioned early it’s certainly one of his most conventional/ approachable films- so I can see why it’s getting a lot wider praise than his early films. As we’ve come to expect with Arrow Video we get a worthy & good selection of extras- which really add a lot to the finished project. So if your interested in Noé other work, or like the idea of a dance performance, arty horror, drama mush up- then this release is certainly the way to go.