I Stand Alone

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After watching and enjoying Irreversible I decided to check out this prior work of the same director. First of all, the DVD was virtually unwatchable, with huge bars on the top and bottom of the screen. I found the story very boring and the violence extreme and absurd. Stay away from this turkey at all costs.

Stunning. The writer-director Gaspar Noe's first-person account of a jobless butcher's trip on the down escalator has a lot of superficial resemblances to TAXI DRIVER, but the real unseen hand behind this shattering picture belongs to Louis-Ferdinand Celine, whose scabrous stream-of-consciousness monologues Noe has translated into scorching, nineties angry-white-man-ese. As the butcher's three hundred francs dwindle, and his handgun starts looking more and more appealing, Noe surgically implants us inside the antihero's head using a cascade of hilarious and horrifying nihilistic rants that don't quite resemble anything you've ever heard in a movie. Noe's ingenuity in reinventing the subjective style of TAXI DRIVER is near-limitless; his array of techniques dazzles, from the Godardian intertitles that break the action like a butcher's cleaver hammering a wooden cutting board, to the deafening gunshots accompanied by digital pans and zooms that throw a Brechtian bucket of icewater on the proceedings whenever they calm down. At times the picture suggests one of Fassbinder's fatalistic fables staged as a William Castle horror movie; in a stroke of genius, Noe conceives of the inevitable crack-up finale not in terms of some novel spin on the image, but as a blizzard of scurrilous language--a head self-narrating to the implode point. At times, the butcher's and Noe's nihilism seem to be one--and a posturing, collegiate nihilism it can be. And the penultimate section of the movie thunks along as Noe recreates painfully familiar scenes from TAXI DRIVER almost in toto. But the cumulative effect of the movie is lacerating, the way early Scorsese and Toback must have felt the first time out. French-language cinema hasn't gotten this kind of wake-up call since the (lesser) MAN BITES DOG.

If I could sum up this film in one comment, it would be: This is a poor man's Falling Down. The story is essentially the same for both films: a disillusioned white male flips out and decides to hit back at a society in which he feels marginalised. The thing that made films like Falling Down enjoyable is that you were given an insight into what drives the main character's behaviour. You understand why he is angry and targeting particular people or groups with his brand of vigilantism. The problem with I Stand Alone is the violence is disproportionate and often mindless. Anyone can go to a bar in "the wrong part of town" and see a violent drunk lash out at innocent bystanders - it's not the kind of thing I pay to see in a film. Not only that - there is a general lack of originality: as well as the plot from Falling Down, the monologues were straight from Taxi Driver and the avante garde moments are taken from Jean-Luc Goddard. The technique of the camera suddenly zooming in at a particular moment, accompanied by the sound of a gunshot was effective once…even twice….but it is plain annoying when it is repeated 20+ times. Don't bother with this one.

In the last couple years, french filmmaker Casper Noe has created quite a name for himself. With two full length films that are both extreme and psychologically disturbing. "I Stand Alone" is not as disturbing as Noe's "Irreversible", but it still is a bumpy ride that some people might not be prepared for. The main character is the jobless butcher, who is featured in Noe's other films. The film narrates the history of the butcher's life and all the hardships he has faced. It's 1980 in the film, and the butcher can't find a job. He lives with his whiny pregnant girlfriend along with her mother. The butcher's mute daughter seems to be the only person he cares about. Throughout the film, we hear the thoughts of the butcher, which are angry, hateful and horrifying. He's at the point of a midlife crisis, and wants to now live his life for vengeance. Peace of mind through a hand gun, so to speak. He slowly starts to loose his sanity as he endlessly searches for a job, and is turned down repeatedly. The film is very bleak like "Taxi Driver" and "Bad Luitenant" and psychotically tense like "Clean Shaven". Viewers are even warned before the disturbing finale. Let's just say the butcher loves his daughter a little too too much. Casper Noe takes us inside the mind of a man who's sometimes racist, misogynistic and homophobic but is still sympathetic towards the character's insanity. In fact, I felt so bad for the butcher that the film made me almost cry. It has such poetic emotion. I have to say, "I Stand Alone" and "Clean Shaven" are the two films which portray mental illness the most realistically. I say this because I have suffered with mental health problems since I was young, and have been on many medications. At one point of my life, when I was working 70 hours a week and on two medications, I almost had a similar emotional breakdown like in the film. That's why I can identify with the butcher. The film is so gritty and realistic in it's portrait of insanity. Many people will probably find the finale frightening. "I Stand Alone" is a masterpiece of psychological drama and intensity unlike any other film. Casper Noe just may become this generation's Roman Polanski. I can't even imagine what he's going to do next.

I find it interesting how Gasper Noe transits from Naturalism into Nihilism with such ease. Consider the "The Butcher"- a character whose identity is defined by his occupation or his ability to be an effective contribution to society- who is constantly frustrated by not being able to function within the occupation that defines his usefulness (or purpose) in life. Noe seems to very adamantly follow this frustrating collapse of the naturalistic world-view to its logical conclusion- a disturbing downward spiral into nihilistic violence, revenge, and numbing hatred. With Noe's postmodern view of Morality and Justice (there is no morality or justice apart from what the individual person can apply to their limited view of the world around them)- there is no hope beyond the nihilistic emptiness expressed through the main character. Without the influence of any transcendence all we are left with is total human depravity. I respect Noe for presenting an honest application of these ideas, and showing the darkness and hopelessness that the naturalistic world-view leads to. However, I feel that he recklessly refuses to acknowledge any glimpse of the transcendent beauty and truth that is clearly evident throughout this world and pierces the darkness presented here. And his visual style (which mainly consists of a Hyperactive Extreme Close-up Technique, and "shock tactics") which appear effective at first, by the end of the film become redundant. One would do better to read Nietzsche, which is more interesting and well thought through in the application of the Postmodern world-view. Neither offer any answers, though Nietzsche offers much better questions.

I found this movie to be sick, repulsive and very, very boring. Nothing of it was good, neither the performances, or the script or visuals. The worst part from this movie was the main character, which was a completely repulsive, hateful, violent, character. But even worse is the fact that, despite all the horrific and despicable things that he does, the movie tries to portray him by a positive light. For that reason, I found this movie to be terrible and disgusting, and with a hateful, horrible message. This is by no means a good film, not even a decent one. It was directed by Gaspar Noe, who also made the equally bad "Irreversible". I hated both films. I don't recommend this film to anyone. If you wanna see a good french film see "Persepolis" or "The Triplets of Belleville". 0/10

"I Stand Alone," the debut feature from renowned French shock auteur Gaspar Noe ("Irreversible") is a film that's pretentious, caustic, tedious, and also strangely compelling. It could very well be the most bitterly misanthropic film most viewers will ever see, but whether that's a good thing is questionable. Noe's tale follows a middle-aged butcher who's spent time in prison, has an extremely short fuse, and is currently trapped in a forced relationship with a female bar owner pregnant with his child. The Butcher, played with a steely humorlessness by Philippe Nahon ("High Tension"), is a man incapable of feeling anything but hate for his fellow man (indeed, his only reason for keeping by his girlfriend's side is the hope that she will front the money for him to lease a butcher shop, which she doesn't). As a comment on class war and bigotry, the film is relentless in its overbearing bleakness (all of France is presented as a run-down warehouse district where most citizens are on welfare), brought to an even lower level by our protagonist's relentlessly hateful and homicidal thoughts; through the ticker-tape subtitles playing underneath what is usually a bland, uneventful scene, we get a window into the psychoses of a man driven to the edge. Noe interestingly ties afflictions such as racism, homophobia, wealth, and sexuality into the emasculation of this man, whose life has become meaningless as a result of the rotten hand he's been dealt. The sound-cued, momentary blackouts, the title cards reading "Justice," "Morality," and "Living is a Selfish Act," and the camera moves accompanied by the sound of a gunshot are at first irritating and pretentious, but eventually merge with the rhythm of the film to become another extension of the Butcher's psychoses. Nahon casts an imposing figure, and portrays his unappealing character with a grace that is strangely endearing; by the time he is molesting his mute, mentally-handicapped daughter in the motel room where she was conceived, we accept his actions without excusing them. The departments where Noe falters--aside from the burgeoning hatred that grows oppressive--is the ersatz uplift of the climax, which feels like a cop-out. Additionally, the way certain lines of dialog--despite their ghastliness--veer into unintentional humor seems to illuminate Noe's pretentiousness (some early scenes with supporting characters who ham it up in TV-sitcom fashion, doesn't help). Overall, "I Stand Alone" is a showy art-house production with a clear intention to provoke its audience, but ultimately works due to its own grim merits.