"The Void:" No Escape

The film, Enter the Void, offers three distinct contenders which could be interpreted as “The Void:” life, the escape of life (i.e. drugs and sex), or death. All three seem to be acceptable candidates, but when you thrush out the film’s representation of each, perhaps “The Void” that the film alludes to is inclusive of all three. The film presents the lives of Oscar and his sister and the friends, or so-called friends, with whom they associate. Their lives are devoid of direction, meaning, and ambition, and are consequently arbitrary, dull, and consumed with self-destruction. Oscar spends his time getting high or looking to get high while his sister accepts any attention given to her, especially sexual attention which she seemingly mistakes for love; Her sexual assertion towards her brother shows that she interprets sex as love because she shows her love for her brother in this way. The second interpretation may consist of the act of getting high, being high, and sex as “The Void” in which they escape their terrible childhood; their devastating childhood is revealed by the intense repetition of the car crash in which their parents died. Lastly, “The Void” may be death which Oscar experiences. The discussion of reincarnation allows this interpretation to warrant death as being the void between lives, namely Oscar who dies and supposedly is born again. Although all three are given merit, the idea of reincarnation allows for life to just be a repetition of life and death, and thus “life,” or existence, incorporates death and through a universal perspective a single life is pointless and irrelevant in the scheme of things. Therefore, because there is no way to escape this cycle, existence is just continually the act of entering a void.