Film, the measure of all things

In concocting a genuine word-of-mouth theatrical hit (with more than $100 million worldwide, it’s by far A24’s biggest success), had they singularly disproved the theory that Hollywood originality is dead, or had they inadvertently confirmed it by making a derivative Marvel-adjacent superhero movie in indie drag?

Why did it take so long for the west to acknowledge the depth and sophistication of a national cinema that had already been undergoing steady developments for half a century?

Another important difference between the two films is that Amen. has so many facts to impart that its only concern when it comes to style and form appears to be what will allow the audience to absorb this information, whereas Irreversible is so formally and stylistically aggressive that this aspect overpowers what it has to say, which isn’t much.

Whatever one decides, it becomes a rationalization either for Noe’s violence or for our willingness to tolerate it. If Irreversible has any value it lies in our pondering which form of rationalization we’re engaging in.

Noe’s film is more fashionable — and getting much more media attention — than Amen. on both sides of the Atlantic because of its “edginess,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean we can learn more from it. I would argue that its status as a fashion statement discourages us from learning much from it. The envelope it pushes is new only in the degree of its ugly explicitness, not in the broaching of new subject matter.

Amen. shows us nothing of the atrocities it deals with, but it still has a lot to say. This makes it the precise reverse of Irreversible, which ultimately speaks about nothing but shows us everything.