Themes from Gaspar Noe's film 'Irreversible'

This is an analysis of Gaspar Noe's film 'Irreversible'

Irreversible is a 2002 revenge thriller by French director Gaspar Noe about the consequences of making impulsive decisions. This is a plot analysis I created that you can follow along with the DVD. If you agree or disagree, please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks for visiting!

Title 2 (8:22-22:50)

Summary

Marcus and Pierre enter a gay S&M club called The Rectum looking for a man called The Tenia who brutally raped Marcus’ girlfriend named Alex. Marcus confronts a man he believes is Tenia and they square off. However, the man gains the upper hand, breaks Marcus’ arm, and Pierre, Marcus’ friend, intervenes to save Marcus from being raped. Meanwhile, the Tenia himself watches all of this happening in awe as an innocent man is killed for his crime. 

Analysis

Marcus’ anger puts him into a dangerous situation. He is not thinking and he is following his impulses. In this scene it is established that he is the impulsive side of the mind. His friend Pierre follows him into the club trying to reason with him to stop and think. Pierre is the critical or analytical side of the mind which is why he follows Marcus and which also describes the relationship between the left brain that takes risks and acts on impulse and the right brain that relies on analysis and critical thinking. As the Bible says in Matthew. 26:41: Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. This scripture explains why Pierre follows Marcus and not the other way around, because it’s easier to think a thing than to do a thing. Temptation, or our impulses, contend with our thoughts or moral discipline which is why throughout the film Pierre is there with Alex and Marcus trying to keep them out of trouble.

It is also important to note the cinematography and how it reflects Marcus’ state of mind. The camera movement suggests that Marcus’ mind is distorted with anger, nothing’s stable. Also, note the red interior lights inside of the gay nightclub. This is important because later in the film, the tunnel where Alex is raped is also red, a color that represents anger and violence. Also, the fact that she is sodomized foreshadows the name of the club, The Rectum. Remember, everything in this film occurs twice. 

Title 5 (27:03-34:23)

Summary

Marcus searches for the man who raped his girlfriend. He steals a cab and tracks down Guillermo Nunez, a gay prostitute who saw the crime. At first, the prostitute is reluctant to cooperate but complies after Marcus threatens to hurt him. The prostitute tells Marcus he can find the man called the Tenia at the Rectum, a gay S&M nightclub.

Analysis

Led by his emotions, Marcus 1st steals a cab, then he assaults a prostitute. All the while, Pierre is there pleading with him to think about what he’s doing, yet Marcus is deaf to anything but his anger. There is a brief interval between him robbing the cab and him assaulting the she-male prostitute where the wild camera movements stabilize somewhat. The shot widens temporarily and Marcus is given a little space and air to think before the next incident. 

Title 9 (39:24-40:54)

Summary

Marcus and Pierre are leaving a party and there is commotion in front of the apartment surrounding an ambulance. Medics carry his girlfriend, Alex, out of the subway on a stretcher. Marcus can’t believe it. Her face is almost unrecognizable as she is placed in the ambulance. Two hitmen on the scene offer Marcus their services. 

Analysis

When Marcus comes out of the party, the camera perspective is stable and he is drinking a bottle of water. But when he sees Alex on the stretcher, the camera and the world begin to spin as his emotions take control of his brain. 

Title 10 (41:03-44:48)

Summary

Alex leaves the party alone and takes the subway. In the tunnel, she stumbles upon a pimp choking a prostitute. The  pimp leaves the prostitute and turns his attention to Alex, raping her and leaving her for dead in the tunnel. 

Analysis

Alex is upset at Marcus’ behavior and makes a couple of tragic mistakes. Her 1st mistake is leaving the party alone. Pierre begs to take her home but she refuses to let him do so. Her 2nd mistake is following the bad advice of some woman on the sidewalk who tells her that the subway is safer than waiting on a taxi. In Alex’s right mind, she may or may not have followed this advice but being that she is in an emotional state almost guarantees that she will not make a rational decision about this. Any sensible person would assume that she would be safer catching a cab above ground and in public view than going down into a subway tunnel where she is completely cut off from civilization. 

Again, there are parallels to this scene and the scene where Marcus goes to the Rectum in search of the Tenia. The 1st parallel is that Pierre, the thinker, appeals with her to not follow her emotions into a potentially dangerous situation. Like Marcus before her, Alex disregards Pierre’s warning choosing instead to follow her emotions. The 2nd parallel is Alex being encouraged to follow her emotions by the Black woman outside the building who tells Alex that the subway is safer than hailing a taxi. Earlier in the film, the 2 hitmen counter Pierre’s warnings by offering to find the Tenia for Marcus. The 3rd parallel is the fact that Marcus and Alex give in to their emotions and suffer similar fates, although in Marcus’ case he is saved by Pierre. The last parallel between these scenes is that they are both red. The walls of the tunnel are red and the lights in the gay club are red. 

Title 11 (54:09-1:06:28)

Summary

Marcus persuades Pierre to come with him to a party. Since Pierre and Alex broke up 3 years ago, he hasn’t been in a relationship with a woman. There are lots of women and drugs at this party and Marcus indulges himself. All the while, Pierre pleads with him to stop. Alex is at the party and she plays along with the atmosphere.  However, seeing Marcus-her man-drunk, high, and groping other woman becomes too much and she leaves the party alone against Pierre’s warning not to do so.

Analysis

Pierre again acts as the moral conscience to both Marcus and Alex. Temptation is everywhere for Marcus and Pierre is with him appealing with him to THINK about Alex and the consequences of his actions. But Marcus further disconnects himself from Pierre, his moral conscience, with drugs and alcohol. Pierre and Marcus are metaphors for cognitive dissonance with Pierre acting as the thinking rational right side of her mind and Marcus acting as the impulsive, emotional, non-thinking left side of her mind. It is important to note that she left Pierre, the thinker, to be with Marcus, the non-thinker, or animal, who follows his appetites. This explains why she acts against Pierre’s good advice to not leave the party by herself. She is allowing her emotions to dictate her actions. Pierre points out the changes in her personality since she’s been with Marcus who exercises zero moral restraint. But unlike Marcus, whom Pierre saves from being raped at the Rectum, Alex won’t be saved from her reckless decisions.

Title 12 (1:06:31-1:13:15) (6:44)

Summary

Alex, Marcus, and Pierre are taking the subway and having a conversation about premonitory dreams, overthinking, and sex. 

Analysis

Pierre, the thinker, is cut off from his impulses and is unable to understand why Alex left him to be with Marcus, the primitive. Throughout this scene, Pierre walks behind them symbolic of the fact that she is allowing her impulses represented by Marcus to suppress her rational mind represented by Pierre. When Pierre refers to Marcus as a primate he is referring to her new position on how she chooses to live her life. This philosophical discussion suggests that there has to be a balance, psychologically, between thinking and being which is why all 3 of them are together even though she left Pierre. Her mistake is taking it to the extreme which is what Marcus, who lives by his impulses, represents. 

Another thing about this conversation: Alex criticizes Pierre of focusing on the other person’s pleasure (regarding sex).  “You have to let yourself go,” she says, “and only think of yourself.” The irony of her criticism is that it is Marcus’ selfish behavior at the party that upsets her and causes her to make unwise decisions that lead to her being raped by the Tenia. 

Title 13 (1:15:42-1:29:12) (13:30)

Summary

Marcus and Alex wake up in bed together. Later, she does a pregnancy test and it comes up positive.

Analysis

Since Alex and Marcus have both abandoned rational thinking and submitted to their primitive urges, it is fitting that this scene begins with them in bed naked. In the previous clip (12) Alex describes a book she is reading on premonitory dreams. When she and Marcus wake up in this clip, Alex describes her dream to him of being inside of a red tunnel that splits in two. He wakes up complaining of numbness in the arm that is broken later in the film. He then, puts on a  record and the song’s lyrics describe both the reverse structure of this film and also events that occur later in the film. The song also talks about outer space. Here are some of the lyrics: 

You make my head spin,

You are my merry-go-round.

I’m always at a party,

When I’m in your arms. 

…We could fly to outer space, 

On the wall above the bed there is a poster of Star-child from 2001: A Space Odyssey so it is no coincidence that the song in the background references outer space. This scene ends with her doing a pregnancy test on herself and finding out that she is pregnant. Remember that in the party scene Pierre says that she is “dancing away the pain.” Pierre says this because Alex knows that Marcus is an unsuitable father for her child. 

Title 13 (1:28:29-end)

Summary

Alex is on the sofa, pregnant. Then, she’s lying on her side on a field of grass surrounded by children playing. The scene spins counter-clockwise until it finally ends in outer space. 

Analysis

Remember, this film is structured in reverse order with the end of each scene attached to the beginning of the following scene and that scene ending where the previous scene leaves off. This scene is no different in that it begins at a different time period from the previous scene. The clip opens and the camera pans down the poster of 2001: A Space Odyssey, across the top of which reads “The Ultimate Trip!” Alex is underneath this poster, on the sofa, holding her stomach which is obviously carrying a child. Her exposed arms and upper body are fleshier than they are in previous scenes. But at no time in the story does she indicate that she was ever pregnant before leaving Pierre to be with Marcus. The camera lingers on her a moment before angling upwards again, over the 2001 poster to the ceiling. 

The overhead camera spins counter-clockwise showing Alex lying on her side in a field of grass with children playing around her. The camera angles up towards the sky which pulsates until there’s only outer space and stars spinning counter-clockwise—this image is the beginning of the subsequent scene that begins with Alex and Marcus waking up in bed together. Either this is a dream or this actually happens and if the latter is true then what happened to Alex’s baby between this scene and her waking with marcus in the previous scene? Was she impregnated by extra-terrestrials, returned to Earth, and robbed of the child prior to her involvement with Marcus? This seems to be the case as foreshadowed by the song in the previous scene, the poster of 2001’s Star-Child, and the fact that the scenes are arranged backwards, meaning that every scene ends where the previous scene begins. This scene ends in space suggesting that she was abducted and impregnated by aliens who used her as a surrogate and who claimed the child prior to her involvement with Marcus.