You Were Never Really Here is a film whose marketing and narrative might have gotten the better of it. The promise of Joaquin Phoenix as a brutal lone wolf on the tail of criminals, and promotional imagery and hype speaking to the film's hardcore violence ("#DropTheHammer") might propose 2018's Man on Fire (2004), or even the year's arthouse thriller, a la Drive (2011.) Disappointment among some of the entirely-negative reviews on IMDb find the film boring, or slow, or both, or incomprehensible, or whatever it might be. To say these opinions are "wrong" would be illogical, instead, they're more misguided than anything.
Phoenix's Joe is a man who, we've heard it before, is haunted by his past. Lynne Ramsay, the film's director, fleshes the damaged hero archetype out to extremes rarely seen or felt, and for that reason alone ...Really Here deserves attention. Joe is an avenger, a righter of wrongs, but his is a sad existence. Through flashbacks verging on horror film snippets, we see Joe to have been the subject of verbal, physical, and perhaps sexual abuse by a brutal father, or father figure. Daddy issues a cliche? Sure, but the way Ramsay jolts the audience with abrasive cries for help or flashes of domestic horror, you're truly transported into a sort of nightmare, one that isn't excessive, visually or sonically, but rather one that is ever-present while we trudge the streets of downtown New York and some of the city's deceptively-residential burroughs, passing the sort of people one passes on the streets. Ramsay populates her locations with believable people, leading believable lives.
"Believable" is perhaps the best way to describe Phoenix's performance, and the Joe character. He has a heavy walk, not a slick one; his clothes are baggy and unfashionable, the kind of person you see who isn't homeless, who is able to eat and has a roof over his head, but is checked out of this plane of existence, pushing forward out of stubborn nihilism.
And that's ultimately what the film is about; a man who perseveres through a personal hell for no discernible reason, looking for some grip on his existence. Joe's been guided by exterior forces his whole life: His abusive childhood leaves him with deep emotional scars, evident in his suicidal tendencies (scenes of Phoenix asphyxiating in an attempt at some sort of high are horrifying); his family's military history, briefly hinted in the form of a uniform in a closet during a flashback, sets him up for that career; the war-fighting, and what seem to be subsequent jobs (police officer, maybe? security of some sort?) leave physical damage and even more horrible images, seared into the mind; and then at the end of the film's episode, in an attempt at some catharsis, he can't even receive the satisfaction, the closure, of killing the man we've come to be decide as responsible for the events of the film. Joe is strung along from abuse to abuse, though our final moments with him are, ultimately, optimistic.
I've avoided explicit detail of the story, though I will address the alleged difficulty some have with following it, whether because of the abrupt editing or Phoenix's mumbled dialogue. You Were Never Really Here presents a story that serves as more of a background we can frame Joe against. It provides the underworld hellscape and plot devices (shady contacts with money in envelopes, brutal sex traffickers, corrupt politicians, etc) we're familiar with so that we have a context for Joe's world and experiences. While not irrelevant, the story is there to serve the idea of Joe as a person, rather than string the audience along.
In what feels like too long a review, I've not even mentioned Thomas Townend's cinematography (it looks good, though is nothing mind-blowing) or Jonny Greenwood's terrific score, varying between synth pulses that will instill the hardcore crime genre, as well as more soothing, traditional chords. I've not mentioned the soundscape and layering of dialogue, between the flashbacks and Joe's walks through the bustling streets. The relationship between Joe and his Mother (Judith Roberts) I've left entirely undiscussed, and that too is a crucial pillar of what makes the film worthwhile (to this I say, read someone else's analysis!) I've ignored all this in a minor attempt to help some understand that the film isn't particularly exciting; the violence is brutal yet detached, the major events of the story don't surprise or intrigue, they simply occur. Lynne Ramsay's film is literary in the way is subjects the audience to a perspective and tries, subtly, to have them understand what breaks a man and pushes him to being capable of violence. And in this I'd say it succeeds.
Phoenix's Joe is a man who, we've heard it before, is haunted by his past. Lynne Ramsay, the film's director, fleshes the damaged hero archetype out to extremes rarely seen or felt, and for that reason alone ...Really Here deserves attention. Joe is an avenger, a righter of wrongs, but his is a sad existence. Through flashbacks verging on horror film snippets, we see Joe to have been the subject of verbal, physical, and perhaps sexual abuse by a brutal father, or father figure. Daddy issues a cliche? Sure, but the way Ramsay jolts the audience with abrasive cries for help or flashes of domestic horror, you're truly transported into a sort of nightmare, one that isn't excessive, visually or sonically, but rather one that is ever-present while we trudge the streets of downtown New York and some of the city's deceptively-residential burroughs, passing the sort of people one passes on the streets. Ramsay populates her locations with believable people, leading believable lives.
"Believable" is perhaps the best way to describe Phoenix's performance, and the Joe character. He has a heavy walk, not a slick one; his clothes are baggy and unfashionable, the kind of person you see who isn't homeless, who is able to eat and has a roof over his head, but is checked out of this plane of existence, pushing forward out of stubborn nihilism.
And that's ultimately what the film is about; a man who perseveres through a personal hell for no discernible reason, looking for some grip on his existence. Joe's been guided by exterior forces his whole life: His abusive childhood leaves him with deep emotional scars, evident in his suicidal tendencies (scenes of Phoenix asphyxiating in an attempt at some sort of high are horrifying); his family's military history, briefly hinted in the form of a uniform in a closet during a flashback, sets him up for that career; the war-fighting, and what seem to be subsequent jobs (police officer, maybe? security of some sort?) leave physical damage and even more horrible images, seared into the mind; and then at the end of the film's episode, in an attempt at some catharsis, he can't even receive the satisfaction, the closure, of killing the man we've come to be decide as responsible for the events of the film. Joe is strung along from abuse to abuse, though our final moments with him are, ultimately, optimistic.
I've avoided explicit detail of the story, though I will address the alleged difficulty some have with following it, whether because of the abrupt editing or Phoenix's mumbled dialogue. You Were Never Really Here presents a story that serves as more of a background we can frame Joe against. It provides the underworld hellscape and plot devices (shady contacts with money in envelopes, brutal sex traffickers, corrupt politicians, etc) we're familiar with so that we have a context for Joe's world and experiences. While not irrelevant, the story is there to serve the idea of Joe as a person, rather than string the audience along.
In what feels like too long a review, I've not even mentioned Thomas Townend's cinematography (it looks good, though is nothing mind-blowing) or Jonny Greenwood's terrific score, varying between synth pulses that will instill the hardcore crime genre, as well as more soothing, traditional chords. I've not mentioned the soundscape and layering of dialogue, between the flashbacks and Joe's walks through the bustling streets. The relationship between Joe and his Mother (Judith Roberts) I've left entirely undiscussed, and that too is a crucial pillar of what makes the film worthwhile (to this I say, read someone else's analysis!) I've ignored all this in a minor attempt to help some understand that the film isn't particularly exciting; the violence is brutal yet detached, the major events of the story don't surprise or intrigue, they simply occur. Lynne Ramsay's film is literary in the way is subjects the audience to a perspective and tries, subtly, to have them understand what breaks a man and pushes him to being capable of violence. And in this I'd say it succeeds.
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