“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...

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