Posted this on an online forum a few months after second viewing, and I guess I might as well copy it here - esp. given the many (oh so many) narrow-minded responses now it's starting to open commercially. Paragraph indents indicate replies by another poster:

Those who admire (or despise) the film as a visceral but mindless shock-piece are missing the point. (I rolled my eyes at Mark Kermode's 'defence' in last month's Sight & Sound, reducing the film to a "breathtakingly efficient exploitation flick" with ironically upbeat ending.) Why is nobody mentioning 2001, which Noe shoves in your face just as emphatically as the sex and violence? Like the Kubrick, this is a panorama of Man's development - from savagery to civilisation - as reflected, or more properly upended, in a single life, and expressed in terms of sexuality.

It's a film that goes very deliberately from Death to Birth (and beyond), starting with nothing but Time (literally "doing time", though I doubt the pun also works in French). This is the land after Death, when indeed "Time destroys all things", morally and physically. We then go to Death itself, both unbearably traumatic and expressed as the ultimate in sexual perversity (not because the Rectum is a gay bar but because it's such a shadowy, unnatural sort of place). Then back to increasing (i.e. decreasing) corruption, with the rape as the pivotal point; in terms of the 'life journey' this is the point when Death begins (maybe when disease first strikes), hence the point in Noe's schema when sexuality turns toxic. Back again to the party, where the mood is one of weariness and nostalgia - the film identifies with Dupontel here, Cassel seen as immature for still doing the stuff he should've grown out of. We're now in middle age. Back to the subway, and we're maybe in our mid-to-late-30s - the point where you start over-analysing sex (sex being the film's guiding metaphor), lose a certain energy, start on the road to corruption. Back to Cassel and Bellucci in the apartment, and suddenly Dupontel is forgotten - what they're doing seems entirely natural now (though it's only a couple of hours before the party, in screen time): this is the flower of youth, sexuality a given, as natural as breathing. Back again to childhood - Bellucci alone, children playing outside, sex not an issue - back to birth, finally back to the land before birth: flashing lights, strobing, pure abstraction. End of movie.

In short, the film is a journey from Birth to Death, which is also a journey from purity to corruption. So the film is deeply pessimistic. *But* it's told in reverse, with a "happy ending" - raising the hope that maybe we can somehow make our way back to purity, instead of constantly moving away from it. So the film is wildly romantic (because that hope is of course impossible). But there's also (very conspicuously) 2001, a journey from savagery to civilisation: each individual life is corruption, but mankind as a whole still makes progress. So the film is bittersweet and thought-provoking.

Well, that's why I said the film was wildly romantic: sure, real time doesn't move backwards, but the point is "wouldn't it be great if it could". Obviously, not everyone is going to respond to that - some will just be exasperated and say "but it *doesn't*" - which I guess is why some people are romantics and others are realists. In a way it's like the ending of 25th HOUR, a beautiful dream that can never come true.

Except that the sad fate is *behind* us, not ahead. That's the point. You can say "well it isn't really" but you'd just be refusing to make the imaginative leap in my opinion, i.e. dwelling on the sad reality when Noe wants you to transcend it. Like I say on my site, "the Time-shuffling becomes a safety valve, offering a way to tell a story that would just be too unbearably bleak without it". Ironically, in a world where "Time destroys everything", Noe *uses* Time in order to salvage some hope, however fleeting and unreal.

A single life devolves over Time, yes. We know this because the film signposts the various Ages of Man along the way, so we know it's going from Death to Birth. But the structure's still a trip from savagery to civilisation, and there's no reason to suppose 2001 is being mocked or upended. I think 2001 is referenced precisely to make us think about mankind as a whole, and - since the film moves in the same direction as 2001 - it's fair to say it carries the same message. Man evolves. But each man (and woman) individually devolves, i.e. gets worn down by Time. You're thinking parallel lines; think mirror-images.

>And Noe implies that the experience and knowledge taints our lives, rather than enriches them.

He's pessimistic about Life, yes. He probably thinks we're born "trailing clouds of glory" (as per Wordsworth, another Romantic) then gradually get corrupted. And don't forget the film is expressed through sexuality, where getting older does in fact bring impotence rather than enrichment. But even this is tempered by the structure. To quote, um, myself again: "If we could only manage to look back at where we started from, it laments, instead of looking forward all the time to our inevitable end - maybe we could somehow reverse the damage. Then again, what about that title?..."