Irreversible

I recently found a list entitled "15 of the Most Disturbing Films Ever Made". Now, anyone that knows me, knows that I would read this list and most likely decide to see all of the films on it, and you'd be right.
One such movie on this list was Irreversible, a French film which, ironically, is told in reverse.

The Gist Of The Film:
Monica Belluci stars as Alex, a beautiful woman who is going out for a night on the town with her boyfriend and her ex-boyfriend with whom she maintains a friendly relationship. They go to a party where her current boyfriend acts like an ass, and so she leaves. Outside, unable to hail a taxi, she takes advice from a woman on the street (presumably a prostitute?) who tells her it would be safer to take the underpass (some kind of tunnel system under the streets) and go to the bus station. Monica thanks the friendly prostitute and heads underground, where she encounters a terrifying individual and is subsequently beaten and raped. Meanwhile the two men she was with are exiting the party and see her being taken away in an ambulance. They ask the police what happened, the police tell them, and then they are approached by an alltogether random stranger and his cohort who offer to help them find who did this. They accept and embark on a long night of vengeance-seeking.

What I Think:
Keep in mind that this is told in reverse, so for the first thirty minutes you have no idea what's going on, who these people are, where they are, and why they do anything hat they do. Also, the filmaker thought it'd be a good idea to swirl the camera around really fast to add to your confusion. But as the camera steadies and the story starts to piece together you realize it's something of a study on cause and effect, where you are told the effect first and then are shown how it happened, piece by piece, until you understand how these people's lives are utterly destroyed by one night. At first I did not like this movie, as I was left with no closure. You see, in an American film the two men would go out into the night with their weapons and their righteous fury and exact revenge on anyone that played a part in the terrible tragedy, and then all would be right with the world. However, this film literally ends before the night takes place and you're only left with the terrible knowledge of what comes next for these people, and that none of it is good. You wish you could change it, but you can't, and you see the whole thing, I mean literally see this woman being raped. Sure, you know she's an actress and this isn't really happening, but the director gives you 9 minutes of uncensored rape scene to think about how this DOES really happen to people. When the film was shown for the first time, a majority of the people watching walked out and I'm assuming they were thinking something like "I can't watch this shit" (except in French). After the rape scene, nothing exciting happens. You just get to examine how much this couple loved each other, how much fun the group had earlier in the evening, and just how happy they all were, which makes the film all the more sickening.

So all in all there are no happy endings, because in real life, things like this don't have happy endings. In the movie two of the characters discuss the chinese proverb "when plotting revenge first dig one grave for your enemy, and then one for yourself" and it's the truth. For the first thirty minutes you will be confused, when the film is over you will still be confused, but the more you actively think about what this story was trying to say to you, you'll start to understand and either hate or love this movie.

I think I really liked it, but I'm still not sure, and that is what art is all about.