The Hell with Martyrs

Would you believe it I am actually writing this 2 weeks after watching the movie and still my heart starts a heavy pounding when I think about it.

Yes, Martyrs, the French horror flick by director Pascal Laugier has left a permanent feeling of discomfort within me. It is not so much your average fear as in Friday the 13th kind of fear. No, this was a perversely darker fear. When I watched it I actually felt breathless and like a child I yearned to be held, comforted and for morning to arrive and light up the world and for birds to sing.

The only other movie that even remotely made me feel this way was Fincher’s brilliant film Seven. I remember taking the tram ride home after watching Seven and feeling a terrible fear of the world.

Martyrs made me feel 100 times worse.

This movie takes the genre to a new level. It is difficult, even after 2 weeks, whether what I feel about this movie is supposed to be a positive interpretation or a negative indictment of the story.

Speaking of the story, this movie is best interpreted as 2 stories in one. There are two halfs and the last half, for me, was more shocking than I expected. I found myself watching helplessly, feeling guilty and ashamed to be human almost. How could we be so mindlessly violent and heartless?

And indeed, we are, are we not? And the bottom line of all forms of violence and torture is pain and therefore suffering.

What if we transcend this pain? How does one do that? And if we did, can we see beyond this reality where there is a constant battle to survive and avoid pain? Religion makes good use of imagined pain: the fire and other tortures of hell. Religion works on blind faith disguised as truths and whether we believe these “truths” is irrelevant in this life because the pain is in the afterlife.

Martyrs on the other hand is about using pain to find that truth. Martyrs is the inverse of religion.

I dare you watch it alone and not think about it for days after.