You Were Never Really Here
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina
Samsonov, Alex Manette, John Doman
Lynne Ramsay was the perfect
person to make a gritty hit-man thriller, as she upends every contrivance and
cliche of the genre. It was more intense, more visceral, more in tune with
psychological realism, and more hammer-ific. Whether it was Joaquin Phoenix
holding hands with one of his victims and singing a song, or the way the camera
artfully avoided showing the bloodiest set pieces inside a brothel, images from
this film still linger with me. Joaquin Phoenix reconfirms his status as his
generation’s finest leading man.
This crime story, adapted from a novella by
Bored to Death writer Jonathan Ames, is about an ex-soldier named Joe (Phoenix)
who finds himself tasked with recovering a kidnapped girl amidst a sinister
political conspiracy involving human trafficking. The tone of creeping dread
and fixation on violent revenge recalls Taxi Driver, last year's X-Men
shoot-em-up Logan, there should be nothing new to see here. Between Phoenix's
muted performance, Jonny Greenwood's string-drenched score, and Ramsay's
expressive jump-cuts, every image crackles with energy, style, and possibility.
It's a death-obsessed movie vibrating with life.
There’s plenty of bloodshed
throughout that underworld quest, yet Ramsay’s treatment of violence is
anything but exploitative; rather, her film resounds as a lament for the trauma
of childhood abuse, which lingers on after adolescence has given way to
adulthood. Reminiscent of Taxi Driver, and energized by Phoenix’s magnetic
embodiment of masculine suffering and sorrow, it’s a gut-wrenching portrait of
a volatile man’s attempts to achieve some measure of solace from his inner
demons sometimes via the use of a ball-peen hammer.
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