MovieChat Forums > Seul contre tous (1999) Discussion > Did anyone else feel frustrated?

Did anyone else feel frustrated?

posted 12 years ago by DocEmmettBrown
4 replies | jump to latest

<There might be tiny spoilers>

I finally saw this film last night (I think it's taken me this long to get over Irreversible). While there were definitely scenes that were disturbing, I felt my over riding feeling was of frustration at the amount of talk without action.
The Butcher spends the vast majority of the film thinking about what he'd like to without actually doing very much of it at all and still this morning I'm trying to work out where the root of my frustration comes from.

Is it that I felt annoyance at the character for getting so enraged without actually doing anything about it?
Is it that I actually see a lot of myself and other people in the character? Clearly not the same situation but human beings (especially the English like myself) love to moan without doing anything to solve the problem.
Or was it simply that my horror loving self was frustrated by the lack of violence and bloodshed in a film I had heard was incredibly disturbing (personally I didn't find it in the same league of disturbing as Irreversible or many other films of its ilk).

I'm not attacking the film in any way, in fact I'm certain a lot of it was deliberate on Noe's part, I just wondered if anyone else experienced similar.

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[–] rabksaj 12 years ago

i saw this film thinking it was going to be a movie full of disturbing and violent scenes but was disappointed with the sheer lack of this. However i was impressed by the narration the word by word quotes on the characters thinking and views and the opinions ,i agreed with them . This guy was depressed and he had a grudge against the world. I can relate to this guy cause my way of life and circumstances are similar i.e. unemployment, unhappy marriage, a retarded daughter etc etc. This film wins for me dispite not having what i had expected.

[–] siamesecaliforniadreaming 11 years ago

Frustration was a key theme of this movie. So if that's what you got out of it, then Noe put you through the correct experience.

[–] ss336 11 years ago

This isn't a horror movie. It doesn't feel like one. It's a social commentary on France and French society. It is disturbing. I am surprised you didn't find it disturbing. It's disturbing because many of the things he says and the actions he performs are justified by the reasoning he gives. There are no jobs, there are no factories, he says. There are many reasons for this, and he traces them back to French collaboration with the Nazis. Can't really argue with any of that. What is strange however is the way he channels all these factors into very specific choices and actions, from threatening the Arab boy in the bar to beating a woman.

One of the main questions for me was, was he the author of his own predicament? People seem to have choices, he says (or perhaps 'thinks'), when in fact there are none. How does he view his own actions? There is a savage nobility in him. He is a psychopath and a sociopath, even an insane modern French Don Quixote, but underlying it all is a sense of frustration at a lack of universal justice. He wants to consider himself a victim, but thinks instead he has simply 'lost' (to the bourgeois abattoir owner). His statement at the end is really perplexing, and throws a completely different light over the previously nihilistic outlook he had projected.

[–] Strazdamonas 9 years ago

That was the point, though. It was supposed to depict the inner monologue of a frustrated person. You have correctly identified with the character. That means that this film worked for you.

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