Martyrs (2008) and Human Capacity of Violence

What if there is something much scarier and horrendous than being stuck with your own thoughts, contrary to what Emily Dickinson had posited two centuries ago? This is where we encounter Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (2008), which situates itself at the focal point of that conjecture by providing ample explanations and details regarding how a human being can perform spine-chilling actions against other fellow human beings. Not a welcome sight for people with fragile stomachs, Laugier’s production provides examples of human torture and abuse in the film by shining light on the terrors and damage humans are capable of inflicting on one another.

Lucie and Anna are the major characters of the film, and the plot revolves around these two childhood and present-time best friends. When she was younger, Lucie had been kidnapped by a semi-religious cult of torture whose aim was to seek what lies beyond the realm of the living—on the other side of the coin. Within their domain, Lucie had been subjected to physical and psychological torture, though, it seems, rape is the sole line that they do not dare encroach on. After a lucky escape, Lucie is promptly placed into a childcare facility and meets her future best friend Anna there. As both the members of the facility and Anna had witnessed, Lucie, even since her young age, had shown extreme signs of PTSD and a tendency for self-harm.

Although Lucie had never been overly explicit regarding her time prior to the facility, she had monomaniacally sworn to take revenge against people who had abused and kidnapped her. In a shocking way, she had completed her revenge prior to the halfway mark of the film, though things get a lot worse for both Lucie and Anna as the film ensues. One important detail to mention is the visual representation of Lucie’s conscience toward a girl she could not help back at the torture chamber—when Lucie was escaping from her captors, she saw a girl who had also been abused and tortured there, although she decided to save herself rather than helping her escape too. At times, Lucie’s guilty conscience resurfaces in scenes wherein Lucie gets physically and brutally attacked by her own regretful decision. Initially, the audience is led to believe the existence of the girl left behind, although we soon observe that it is Lucie himself who is stabbing, hurting, and fighting with herself instead of another party doing harm.

Tragically, Lucie commits suicide after fulfilling her task, leaving her best friend alone both in the world and at the crime scene. This is a shocking moment since we have only reached the halfway mark of the film, though the shock and horror would double—even quadruple—in the dreadful fate of Anna, which is yet to unravel itself. As previously mentioned, this cult-like society is extremely keen on attaining the ultimate mystery of life; torture and abuse are all means for this goal. Their new victim becomes Anna—as they capture her in the house where Lucie’s tortures had been assassinated—and what we see is no short of snuff films. In a systematical and methodical fashion, Anna is tortured and fed with pain and suffering to the point of desensitization and opening up her eyes into higher planes. Drawing close to the finale, Anna gets skinned alive without any sedatives and lives, though she had spent two hours dead. Those two hours are the most important segment, aligning with the cult’s objective, as she had seen beyond the realm of living, a higher plane of existence, which the cult had been searching for. Anna informs the supposed leader of the cult regarding what lies ahead beyond existence, though only one person learns about this, not even the audience. In an extremely tragic manner, however, the leader of the cult decides to commit suicide moments prior to her annunciation of this matter, and the credits roll in.

In brief, Martyrs is a disgustingly gore and brutal film that delves into topics of abuse and torture. In search of their goal, a cult ruins the lives of many people and makes their whole existence a blob of suffering and torment. Although the rest of the society gets away with impunity, their objective is still not achieved ironically, as their leader decided to take the secret to the grave—or she was too keen to die before announcing it to everyone else.