THE FATHER THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRITThe fuck bro this shit was insane. It was intense, slightly funny, cruel, and sensory. It has no mercy nor love for its characters or humans in general. This movie feels awful, and you can sometimes barely tell what's happening. It's so harsh and feels like a 90-minute panic attack, and will make you need a Xanax after it. A masterpiece, I loved it! It explores chaos, control, and the darker side of human nature. It's a Noé movie, very clearly, and he pushes his boundaries with this one. There’s not one single narrative or basic structure here. The fucking movie opens with what seems like a 9-minute dance scene without cutting, and honestly, the whole movie has fewer cuts than one single Madame Web scene. The film is more of an experience than a narrative, where Noé is trying to kill you or make you have an epilepsy attack. Like his other movies, they are dangerous. I don’t recommend marathoning them (I will). It’s about the fragility of order and just showing to its max how quickly a group that seems like a family turns on each other. How society, with the right set of things, will fall into chaos. Could Noé do this, y'know, more normally? Yes, he could. Was the dancing, music, aesthetic, and the very camera spins amazing? Yes, they were.
It’s a fucked-up movie about the loss of control over yourself and the people that surround you. It begins as this very energetic celebration of life where everyone likes everyone, and they’re dancing all around and very happy. Their creativity really spikes really quickly into a neon-dark nightmare once they realize they’ve been drugged. The movie is like a blend between euphoria and chaos and, obviously, drugs. How easily passion and freedom can slip into violence and destruction. Noé doesn’t really fucking care much about the technical ways this chaos manifests, but he trusts what he has and lets it spread itself, while his script is more interested in the emotional and psychological things. The script is only 5 pages, so he really stripped this whole thing down and put a lot of trust into his actors to make this as realistic as possible and forced us to face the human spirit. This theme is reinforced by the use of continuous, extremely long takes that sometimes you can’t really tell what’s happening to the fullest, making us as disoriented as everyone in there.
Another thing in Climax is just groups and individuals. I don’t know if this makes sense, but for example, when the dancers are in a group, they are bound together by their love of dancing, moving, and stuff. But that develops into paranoia and primal human instincts. Noé, in here, explores how quickly group dynamics can break down when pressure is applied and how the fear of losing control turns out to be the scariest thing to anyone and leads to betrayal, violence, and just madness in general. I’m not gonna lie, my eyes are hurting, I have a headache—fuck you, Noé. Now, dance in here is about control. We can see that the dance in the beginning was fucking amazing, and no matter how chaotic and messy things were, there was always control and synchronicity. But once the LSD hits, the second dance is more chaotic, uncontrolled. Their harmony gets shattered, and they get impulsive. The second dance is not controlled. We can even see people beating each other up sometimes and everything.
This movie is about humans. Noé, von Trier, Yorgos all do this, but Noé does it better. They all explore humans in their primal and carnal form. Von Trier hates it, Yorgos makes fun of it, but Noé, in here, is amused by it. He shows the spiritual part of us, and he uses that drug trip to unlock everyone's desires and fears. The movie, as it progresses, only breaks more boundaries between everyone, physically and morally, because they are acting out their urges, and Noé isn’t afraid of showing everything. He knows the extremes of human behavior, and he shows us, whether it’s sexual, violent, or even sometimes emotional. This movie feels—and kinda is—a social experiment. But although it’s very harsh and cruel, somehow it’s kinda hopeful (kinda). There’s this beauty to the movie that’s not thrown in our faces, but you can always feel it in there. I think it’s because of the visuals that are jaw-dropping and overwhelming. It’s deeply, deeply saturated one second, and then in another, it’s this dark, monotone room, almost even feeling kinda oppressive. The movie will always force you to grapple with the fact (not opinion, a fact) that the instincts that bring creativity, pleasure, monuments, art, movies, music—all the things we love—are always the same ones that create violence, chaos, wars, and deaths. By the end of the film, the dance floor is a representation of our world. It was transformed from this place of amazing creativity where they once were doing all those dancy cool stuff, to Gaspar Noé’s depiction of hell, where the dancers have been trapped both physically and emotionally in their worst impulses. But Gaspar doesn’t hate that. He’s accepted that and is amused by it. It’s not easy to watch, but it’s a powerful movie. Noé knows that our impulses either create beauty or violence, good and bad, and he also recognizes that we will never know how to predict it.
Overall, Climax is absolutely insane. Intense, slightly funny, cruel, and chaotic, it feels like a 90-minute panic attack. Noé pushes boundaries, ditching traditional structure for a sensory experience. It starts as an energetic celebration of life but quickly spirals into a dark, neon nightmare when everyone gets drugged. The movie dives into control, chaos, and how quickly things can fall apart. It’s brutal and relentless but also strangely beautiful, showing human nature at its most primal. Not for everyone, but a wild ride.
