The film’s director Gaspar Noe uses the credits or directly puts into the speech of the antihero – butcher cynical statements in the spirit of: “Morality belongs to him who holds it in his hands”, “people are like animals: first they are loved, then buried, then forgotten”, “life is a manifestation of selfishness”. Thus, the coordinate system of the axiology of cynicism in which the action of this disgusting film for a normal person will take place is set. One Against All tells the story of the wanderings of a marginal butcher who tries in vain after his release from prison to start a new life: to start a family, get a job, find a job. The events are shown from the subjective point of view of the butcher himself, accompanied by his inner monologue. From this monologue you can get acquainted with the limited and full of hatred, disappointment, contempt for other people inner world of the antihero. The only person for whom he has warm feelings is a minor daughter Cynthia, with whom he dreams of reuniting. But in relation to her, his feelings are not paternal, “human” in nature, but rather the animal character of sexual attraction. Butcher is absolutely sure that "love, friendship - all these are only fairy tales, illusions and all human relations are reduced to small calculations." But he is genuinely surprised that none of his former "friends" show any desire to help in his current unenviable situation as an unemployed and homeless loser. As for the prospects of birth and life, his views are also quite definite: “No, I do not pity this child, it would be better not to be born.” From this staunch anti-natalism follow the actions of the butcher, which would be impossible to understand in the context of conventional morality. These cruel actions, diluted with appropriate internal reasoning, form the plot basis of the film. It seems that all this is done only in order to postulate in the end “morality: each person has his own morality.” But moral relativism, justified from the subjective position of the pathological marginal personality, from this perspective looks more like a self-justifying invention of a flawed consciousness than as an objective given of human social relations.
Such a film is extremely difficult for moral and psychological perception, immerses in an atmosphere of cruelty and alienation, focuses on the most pathological aspects of the human personality and will definitely not be understood by every viewer.
The main character, whose name we will never know, is the butcher. Due to ironic and even stupid circumstances, he goes to prison. When he finds freedom, he tries to rebuild his life and get his daughter back. . .
At first glance, a perfectly normal description of a feature film. But what could be wrong with it? Of course he is. “Gaspar Noe” is a name that is primarily associated with the scandalous tape “Irreversibility”, and appearing anywhere makes the reader experience certain sensations or reflexes.
Noe is the brave man of our time who will always deliver his message. Having his own unique handwriting, his name alone makes his audience armed. And the viewer himself, who automatically gets into the experiment, is literally warned in certain places if something is coming.
“One against all” is a classic Noah, and will undoubtedly be enjoyed by those and only those who know what they are watching.
9 out of 10
“One Against All” is Gaspar Noe’s first feature-length film, a logical sequel to his short film “The Fall.” Passion for the disgusting will be veiled in the facets of the romanticization that a French provocateur with Argentine descent has been trying to express his entire career. And from the first tape you can see that he does it fairly honestly and frankly.
The hero of the picture is a butcher left alone with the need to raise a daughter who raised her frightened and rejected, experiencing serious inner anxiety for her life. So he mistakenly killed a young guy, mistaking him for a rapist, served time, completely trampling into the collapsed carcasses of internal demons, went out and was left alone with all the problems of the world.
With loneliness, like a cancerous tumour that corroded his insides. And with loneliness, expressed in the lack of interest in him as a person. The picture is like a solo performance, where the scene may well remain empty, and the viewer will hear only a voice from behind the scenes. The inner monologue is the main tool in Noe’s hands for the realization of his creative plan. However, it is not an exquisite find, a large text lining is a transition period to the final madness. The purpose of speech is not to convey meanings, but to play with accents, pace, madness and tone. Believe the butcher, the more frequent speech is accentuated by artillery shots, like a cleaver grinding a few juicy pieces of meat for consumption. In fact, the butcher consumes himself.
He has few options. Everything is disgusting exactly as a director. A one-act drama with an impending end that is too close and will not be quintessential, but an escape. The butcher sees two ways of disgust that will give him a chance to escape and reveal himself. Either finish everything beautifully, or compensate for all inner torments with sweet, colored love, abomination. Everything is better than annoying yourself.
The second part of the “trilogy of destruction” shows us the new life of a butcher in another city with a pregnant bar mistress, where they live with her mother in a squalid apartment somewhere north of Paris. The family is in poverty, the wife, along with her mother, nag the husband for the fact that he can not find a job until he breaks down, deciding on a terrible act, and does not escape back to Paris, where he tries to start a new life and find its meaning - his daughter, to whom years earlier he lost his parental rights.
At the beginning of this film, the plot of the previous short film is retold in a couple of minutes, followed by a continuation of the story about the butcher-loser, which takes new, no less shocking turns. Here, at least, the veil of secrecy is opened, why the butcher’s roof went off and life did not start – this already looks more convincing. The director doubles the dose of hatred that oozes from the screen in the form of a Voisover with the cynical-pessimistic thoughts of this loser, whose life has forever derailed, and now, as an offended teenager, a plan of revenge is ripening for all those who dare to bypass him in this life. It was with an abundance of behind-the-scenes chatter under the vagrants of the main character in the outskirts of the pompous capital of vice and debauchery that the creators overdid, because the film, which had a promising beginning, became increasingly boring and boring to watch with the uninteresting throws of the butcher and his hatred for everything and everything, including himself. Sharp hits of the camera with a “flapper” more often play the role of a screamer than a justified style decision. With the oppressive atmosphere, Noe coped as well as in the previous work – that bloody shade of the picture was already diluted and not so nauseating looked, and the heaviness of the atmosphere was achieved with the help of oppressive interiors and footage of the deserted industrial zone of Paris with simple poor workers. And, as in the last time, the director did not do without defiant scenes, which here, rather, are designed to dilute an increasingly boring narrative, to the end, giving a relatively positive picture of finding himself and the only meaning of life that he had at all. “One against all” – in general terms, just like the offended teenager who does not know how to attract attention to himself, and goes to extremes. Then the story of the butcher finally ends in the first minutes of the third film of the trilogy – “Irreversible” (2002).
5 out of 10
As you know, in the modern world there are many serious problems. These include international terrorism, economic crises, geopolitical tensions, drug addiction, AIDS, and Ebola. Naturally, such an acutely social director as Gaspar Noe could not ignore the world’s problems and therefore chose the most acute of them for his full-length debut: the attempts of an elderly butcher with autism to find work.
The picture was created under the influence of “Taxi Driver” Scorsese and “Bad Lieutenant” Abel Ferrara and qualitatively made technically.
The main character of the film is a very successful find of the director. Our butcher has few words, answers all questions with sullen silence, is not even able to smile and, according to the good tradition of French authorial cinema, beats his pregnant girlfriend when she gets him. It is not surprising that such a character immediately causes audience sympathy.
Noe's character is so self-absorbed that, like the bad Ferrara lieutenant, he can't focus on sex even when he's engaged in it. He hardly speaks, but he thinks very much, and his misanthropic reasoning is of rare depth and insight, for example: why are there so many faggots among the rich? This topical issue for all mankind is supported by a large number of references to oral sex, so that some irresponsible viewers, unfortunately, may even suspect Gaspar Noe G-d knows what.
In the hearts of many viewers, "One Against All" will undoubtedly leave a deep mark. It is a pity that he left no trace in my soul. Maybe it's because the film is too slow and stylized. Angry content does not quite get along with the chamber and ascetic visual range. And the wide format of this film, imho, is not at all suitable for the face. But the film uses an original technique: each scene ends with the sound of a gunshot, which in advance causes alarm in the viewer. I have never seen this in any other movie.
Overall, I found the problems of a slightly retarded butcher less interesting than other, more important problems. You will say, of course, that my callousness and blindness are to blame. You’re right, I’m more interested in the current dollar than this movie. This is the height of cynicism, you say. Could the dollar be more interesting than an unemployed French butcher? But you can't help it: I'm that thick-skinned. And so "One vs. All" left me with the impression of being somewhat unnecessary. On the other hand, the “scandalous” ending was almost touching. Artistically, of course, not in any other way. Or else you suspect me, God knows what.
“Everyone is for himself and God is against everyone.” That's the name of Werner Herzog's movie. It is clear that there is no God, and this indicates a certain state of affairs, the rigid laws of his movement. The peculiarity of this maxim is that “God” acts, among other things, through people who possess the phenomenon of consciousness, capable of reflecting on their miserable situation. This film presents a very good, without calculating-speculative “taking on shock” and unnecessary pressure on the viewer, and without indulging in his dull-glamorous, pathetic-self-centered states of mind, an example on the one hand of the manifestation of “God”, on the other hand of the so-called man with his specific injuries, problems and madness. The chamber final, consisting of three parts, is complex. At first, the viewer can feel what, in general, converges with the general line of the film. Then, for the first time in the film, a more positive message emerges that a non-lazy and non-stupid viewer would have thought of without this positive turn, but which the director did not show. The portrayal of this positive moment is important in its own way and enhances the film’s realistic artistic appeal. The third, last part of the finale may be disappointing, but it just shows the strength, the enormous complexity of “god” – be it a mental disorder or something else – in comparison with man. As far as I know, one of the foundations of modern physics is the degree of uncertainty in so-called reality. The ephemeral and at the same time inexorable (a bad, too sentimental-human word) of nature is illustrated by this film.
If my review is now being read by someone who is just getting ready to get acquainted with the work of Gaspar Noe, I would advise you to start with this film, despite the fact that the ways of implementing the conceived in “One Against All” are significantly different from those that will guide the Argentine in the subsequent “Irreversibility” and “Entry into the Void”; nevertheless, what Noe “feels weak”, to what he gravitates, is quite clearly presented here. It’s better to start now, because it’s more and more personal, and inside of this person there’s a lot of obsession, a lot of fear, maybe a lot of hatred for those parts of life that form the meaning of being for someone. In general, Noe-filmmaker is not the most pleasant person.
Personally, I have a contradictory attitude towards the director: on the one hand, I hate him, I consider him sick on the head, on the other hand, I recognize his corporate style in the implementation and, probably, because he has only three films (short films and participation in almanacs do not count), I do not want to erase him from the face of the earth. To say that his work carries something, I do not undertake. But the fact that he turns himself inside out, believing that in this way he knows the essence as such, is felt.
In his debut work “One against All”, Gaspar Noe places the Butcher in the center of the narrative, whose crippled fate from an early age left an imprint on his entire subsequent life. Through the expression of the method of the endless internal dialogue of the Butcher with himself, the director reads to us a self-written treatise of existence in which he seeks to destroy all the productivity of human self-consciousness, which determines the individuality and uniqueness of each of us, at the same time lowering man to the level of an ordinary earthly creature, which is not destined to know eternal peace, being constantly torn apart by internal contradictions, which would live much more simply by eating and multiplying.
Everyone has their own opinion of society. But personally, it seems to me a kind of ... a choir around an ogro-om campfire with songs, dances, smiles, handshakes. Is there really (objectively) harmony and harmony in this circular movement, or is it just a deception of sight? Does it have a purpose other than self-reproduction? What about those who refuse to dance? Or burnt in eternal fire or excluded from the social circle and sent to impenetrable, thick, cold darkness ... in the non-existence of reality. Exclusion does not mean joining the same excluded (called revolutionaries, anarchists, rebels, punks, etc.) and creating a new social group that could stand in opposition to the former. Nope. Humanity is divided into two categories: Me and Others, Individual and Society. One against All.
The main character of the film is just such an outcast. Formally, physically, he still exists in this world, but in fact he is already moving at an accelerated pace towards nothingness, flying at the speed of a bullet past everything finite - pregnant fat wife, work, rent, friends, France. And only one thing stops him, and does not allow him to part with this “vile” world. Daughter... Silent, mysterious, modest, innocent, beloved.
The nature of the Butcher is really revealed in relation to her daughter. His strong emotional attachment to it forces him to choose between two evils—or the destruction of himself and her as an unconscious subject who has not yet known all the troubles and sufferings of being. Or absolute, all-consuming, free love. So strong that it is forbidden by society and “morality.” Love is the only way for the Butcher to “give an outlet to his desire and not to someone else’s” and to be happy is unthinkable without the crime of laws and borders.
Undoubtedly, the film has a peculiar style of storytelling, a special manner of presentation, not shy of hard and frank scenes. Why is it that almost all serious contemporary directors (Trier, Haneke, Balabanov, Noe) focus exclusively on violence, degeneration of personality and society? Is it true that in our age, which condemns all war and violence, men have become more evil, more cunning, more unceremonious, more hypocritical, more vulgar than in the past era? Is the evil that was previously joyfully and vividly splashed out with powerful streams of red blood on the battlefields now frozen with poisonous slurry in the murky marsh of social space, “caring about its citizens”?
Movies like “One Against All” explode your consciousness with a thousand fragments, each of which with a sharp question mark painfully digs into our life-filled “being”, demanding its permission.
I didn't find the answers. And you?
The film’s description is not really accurate. In short, it's about a loser named Butcher who doesn't have a job, a pregnant bitch wife, her same bitch, her mother. One day, he beats her, takes the gun and goes to Paris. Start a new life.
I'm a big fan of French New Wave cinema. A mad admirer of her. And even there are not very successful experiments. I mean Godard's late works and ending with the disgusting Socialism. That doesn't negate his talent. It just seemed to me that he was trying to do something special and innovative, but he wasn’t very successful. And to go "on the rolled" - not in his principles.
And there are directors who initially, very cunningly, try to remove what I want and pass off as “innovative language”. Gaspar Noe is one of them. I will also be annoyed by Quentin Tarantino, who is completely mad at his Palm Branch and is frantically trying to repeat his success. Filming Hitler dying in a movie theater, which is absurd, and we are told, "You're looking at the wrong thing!" It's Tarantino! It turns out that you can shoot any nonsense, and hide behind the fact that the director has such “author’s language”.
It irritates me when there is no idea, no subtext in a film. There are merasmatic pictures that are trying to give us a “deep metaphor”. When stupidly, unpersuasively, we are shown a person who kills someone, and endless babble critics and film researchers begin to isolate from this some “calls to the whole world” and saying almost that this is a “hymn non-conformist.”
The above paragraph fully describes what happens in the film. A completely empty movie that doesn’t teach, explain, or entertain. What the hell am I supposed to know about a crazy loser? All this under static pictures and the incessant stream of thoughts in the form of a Voysover. This reminded me of Limonov’s Executioner (an equally empty work, only there the character suffered from having to please women of different ages and positions).
And Noe's next work - "Irreversible" - if not for the notorious "anal rape" - I am sure that no one would know about "Irreversibility" and about Gaspar himself.
Monsieur Gaspar Noe, thanks to such as you die French cinema!
It was about the same butcher. Very similar.
Movies are not recommended for viewing, but in principle to anyone. Other than annoyance, it causes nothing. Especially for lovers and connoisseurs of aesthetic cinema “with a box” inside, who can think and decide something for themselves.
The film has one small “plus” in the director’s decision – a perfect ascetic narrative. And it's a good operator job. The empty streets of Paris during the day (nonsense!) bring no less cold than the disorder in the deserted London in the film 28 Days Later.
3 out of 10
The film is the plot continuation of the 38-minute “Fall”, shot by a native of Argentina Gaspar Noe back in 1991. In “Padal” it was about a butcher who, after the departure of his wife immediately after the birth of his daughter, was forced to raise a child alone. Raised in strict morals, the daughter grew up unsociable and with obvious delays in mental development. And when she came to her father’s shop with bloody legs, the butcher unknowingly mistook her first menstruation for rape. In a rage, he grabbed a knife and killed an innocent young worker. He went to prison and lost all rights to the child. Years later, he was released from prison.
So begins this now-big Noe film, the events of which date back to 1980. Released from prison, the butcher moves with his mistress from Paris to Lille and settles in her mother’s house. After his release, he is unable to find a job. After being brutally beaten by a jealous and already pregnant mistress, he is forced to flee back to Paris. Driven to a dead end by unemployment and a lack of money, the butcher decides to resort to violence, the most accessible way to take revenge from those who have succeeded in this life. But, without realizing his plan, he begins to harbor the idea of killing his own daughter, and then himself.
Noe offers a clinical case of social phobia, decadence and misanthropy of an emotionally depressed 50-year-old man who became an outsider at the end of his life. A ruthless style dominated by red (like freshened meat) creates constant emotional discomfort. Often connections between frames are accompanied by credits, concise like newspaper headlines, and sonic chops sounding like shots. In addition, Noe often resorts to taking ultra-fast hits or departures from the object-character.
Such an author's vision provokes more repulsive feeling than interest in what is happening. Therefore, not everyone will have enough strength to look to the end of this psychologically discouraging diagnosis-portrait of degrading consciousness. From frame to frame, the director forces him to dive deeper into the most secret corners of the psyche of his character, who painfully endures loneliness and alienation. Especially at an age when it is no longer possible to change attitudes and habits. The butcher’s voice-over monologue does not stop for almost a second, essentially turning into a stream of his consciousness.
The author tries to “reflect” social, geopolitical, national problems (by releasing many derogatory comments about his beloved France). The defining theme of the film is the question of morality and justice: “The past always catches up with you and requires you to pay the bills,” concludes the author through the mouth of a butcher, to refute this with another comment at the end.
He comes to this conclusion after the horrific realism of the murder scene, before the demonstration of which Noe even has to resort to a warning inscription: “You have 30 seconds to stop watching.” However, he still leaves his hero a chance to go different, but, again, perverted way. And this imaginary happy ending affirms the last remaining right of the butcher to do as he pleases.