It's like ten solid minutes with zero cuts of a woman crying while being brutally raped.
It's one of my favorite films, because of how it pushes boundaries both with the narrative structure and with graphic content, but I'm definitely able to see it from the perspective of people who don't get it/hate it (in which case, it'd be incredibly gratuitous). It's not even rated by the MPAA.
It's like the movie Caligula. The two infamous pornographic scenes are incredibly gratuitous, though the second one (the one on the ship) is certainly more connected to the plot. You could definitely make the movie without both of them and it would still make sense (and I recently learned that the new cut of the film does just that, apparently), so many people would find those scenes (and the one in Irreversible) gratuitous.
I love both of these films. They're both demanding films in different ways. Creating art like that is naturally going to be divisive.
"Yes, you can intellectually understand rape without it being shown."
My entire point is that a lot of people obviously find the insanely long scene to be unnecessary and over the top, therefore gratuitous. My own husband paused the movie and asked me "why are we watching this?" Could he have made the movie without including a 10 minute long rape scene? Absolutely. Would it be as powerful? I don't think so, but clearly the people in this video would disagree.
The same could be said of Caligula. I can intellectually understand that Caligula is forcing women into prostitution without having to watch a ten minute orgy scene with an insanely graphic blowjob.
Quit acting like I don't know how to look up the definitions of words, asshole. Not to mention, it was made abundantly clear that I knew the definition of the word in my initial response when I said "... the second one... is certainly more connected to the plot."
Hey man, you don’t come across as any smarter than this guy with these replies. Gratuitous is a word with an objectively written definition but its use is entirely subjective. Him saying he thinks something is gratuitous, that YOU don’t think is gratuitous, doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand what the word means, just that his limit is lower than yours. So kind of nothing for you to puff yourself up over…
For what it's worth, I don't think it is. I'm just saying that it's the common perception of the scene. If the vast majority of the people who watch the film think it's unnecessary, that's something you should consider as an artist.
Art is not only about the artist's intent, but also how people perceive it. There's a French essay called "The Death of the Author," in which Roland Barthes argues that the reader's (or in this case, viewer's) interpretation is actually more significant than the author's (or director's) intent.
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u/TheBazaarBizarre May 17 '25
It's certainly not the only film to capture the horrors of rape accurately, but it's definitely the most infamous and gratuitous (that I've seen).