Bad Trips: Spiritual Agonies and Ecstasies in the Films of Gaspar Noé

“I was raised atheist ... I really have a problem with people who talk of God or life after death,” says Gaspar Noé, one of contemporary cinema’s great provocateurs.1 It’s an unsurprising comment from the director, known for his unsparing look at meaningless violence, dark impulses, and the emptiness of life. Yet the comment belies the recurrence of spiritual themes and schemas in his work. Noé’s filmography is an ongoing spiritual quest that is aware of, and even desires, its own futility. An atheist-seeker, he is fascinated with faiths he does not share, and looks, both forensically and sensually, at their praxes and manifestations. Through the lenses of different spiritual traditions, he explores the agonies and ecstasies of the human body and tests the camera’s abilities to capture them. His cinema—notoriously, relentlessly carnal—pushes bodies to extremes. These extremities test spiritual promises of altered states and exposes the dark side of seeking transcendence. Yet even in his dark and cynical moments, Noé still uses spirituality as a pretext for a strong visceral engagement with a “something more” that lies beyond normal human perception. The contortions of body and the pulsations of animate flesh express the duality of an intense present and a shimmering, liminal presence.