I Stand Alone (1998)

by Octavio Carbajal Gonzalez

‘I Stand Alone’ is a film directed by Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Noé; a brilliant director known for controversial films like “Irreversible” (2002) or “Enter The Void” (2009). Noé is famous and controversial for the brutality he exhibits in his films. Based on visual and narrative experiences far from conventionalism, Noé ends up depicting existential dilemmas and makes brutal and enriching social critiques.

‘I Stand Alone’ is a stormy and phenomenal movie in which we enter the life of “The Butcher” (Phillipe Nahon), a French man whose real name never gets revealed. The Butcher is a total failure in life: socially, financially, mentally, in relationships, family- in everything.

When he was 2 years old, his mother abandoned him. With 6, his innocence was stolen. With 14 he becomes a butcher. With 30, his wife abandons him and he is left with a mute daughter and develops an incestuous lust towards her when she is a teenager. Due to an unfortunate circumstance, he assumes that she has been raped; and with fury attacks a man and ends up in prison. After his imprisonment, he starts dating a wealthy woman and impregnates her, with the expectation of using her wealth. But his dreams are broken when the new wife denies him the money and a mutual future.

Dejected, frustrated, and desperate, he now goes through the existential dilemma in search of the meaning of his life and survival, until he finally resorts to universal hatred and extreme nihilism. The film presents an amazing and intensely misanthropic inner monologue of the Butcher, told through a voiceover. Many of his thoughts are intensely provocative and refreshing, as well as intrepidly profound.

This film is about the fury and rage of those in the working class who suffer from the pains of a difficult childhood, are punished for their crimes that arise mainly from anger, and endure the humiliation of unemployment. However they refuse to let life knock them down. The butcher wants to fight against what blocks his path. But, like an animal, he chooses his targets impulsively, making his life an authentic Roman circus of fury and pain.