Scottish film-maker Lynn Ramsay’s works are often about
broken people. Through the inner burden carried by these isolated damaged
people, she tries to explore the underbelly of a debased society. Ramsay’s
aesthetics are at once intimate, fragmentary, psychologically disturbing, and
elegantly beautiful as she uses formal dexterity to turn her film into an
original work. On the first look, Ramsay’s three feature films – Ratcatcher
(1999), Morvern Callar (2002), and We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011) – seem
like simple dramatic exercise on trauma. Yet her aural-visual trance-narratives
combined with the narrow subjective field-of-vision turns the dramatic material
into an immensely watchable poem of chaos and carnage. Ramsay’s new film You
Were Never Really Here (2017), which received a standing ovation at last year’s
Cannes (also won best screenplay and best actor award in its unfinished state),
once again broods on the traumatic experiences of an emotionally repressed
individual. However, unlike the female protagonists of the director’s last two
films, the male protagonist here is a violent guy – a hit-man with certain codes
of ethics.
Apart from Ratcatcher, Lynn Ramsay’s other two films are
based on books. But what’s fascinating and idiosyncratic about her adaptations
is that they aren’t straightforward filmic conversions. Ramsay is the kind of
film-maker who involves herself from scripting process to casting to
set-design. So she takes a book and essentially strips off the story’s elements
to fit into her own vision. In retrospect, one could appreciate both the film
and book versions, and entirely for different reasons. You Were Never Really
Here (2017) is based upon Jonathan Ames’ novella ‘Bored to Death’. It tells the
story of Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), a spooky lumbering figure. He’s a suicidal,
middle-aged guy who is hinted to be a military vet stricken
with PTSD. Joe lives with his elderly, ailing mother (Judith Roberts) in New
York. This ghost of a man who haunts his own life actually works as a hit-man
for a mysterious boss. When we first see Joe, his face is encased inside a
plastic bag, a voice bidding him to ‘do better’ [Ramsay’s Ratcatcher also opened
with the image of a boy suffocating himself, an obvious metaphor to reflect the
characters’ emotional adversity]. There are no flashbacks to explain Joe’s
post-traumatic stress in detail. What we get is few subliminal images – images
erupting from Joe’s subconscious – that imply irreparable suffering in
childhood and peeks into other atrocious things he has committed.
Following the ‘plastic-bag’ visuals, we
see Joe in close-ups, cleaning up the things after finishing his brutal assignment.
A bloody hammer is wiped off with toilet tissue, photographs are burned, and he
slogs down the hotel’s hallway with his shoulders downcast bearing the figurative
cross. Joe is dexterous when it comes to delivering violence, and he
specializes in rescuing kidnapped or runaway children and returning them
to their families. His new job involves a senator who wants to find and rescue
his daughter Nina Votto (Ekaterina Samsonov) from a brothel full of underage girls. When
Joe sets out to save the girl, the situation escalates and he is caught in
broader conspiracy. Director Ramsay keeps the sense of violence floating in the
air. Yet we don’t often see the brutal bloody acts; we only discover the
shocking mess left in its wake.
Watching Joe moving through the streets in a car, absorbing
its atmosphere of seediness, instantly reminds us of Travis Bickle, also about a
military vet (Vietnam War) who sets out to rescue a teenage girl from the depths of human
depravity. But Joe doesn’t carry out vigilante justice, and unlike Scorsese’s
masterpiece, Ramsay’s vision is more intimate and narrow (focusing on the
effects of violence on a individual’s psyche). The less talkative Joe shares
most of his characteristics with lean, mean hit-men inhabiting Jean-Pierre
Melville’s existential crime features. More than Taxi Driver (1976), this film
bears the shades of John Boorman’s underappreciated classic Point Blank (1967), a
touch of Steven Soderbergh’s cool crime yarn The Limey (1999), and
stylistically attunes to Alice Winocour’s Disorder (2015) – also about a bulky ex-soldier (played by Matthias Schoenaerts) with PTSD. And, Joaquin
Phoenix’s bewildering performance imbues the narrative with perfect emotional
compass. Phoenix’s evocative gestures and eccentricity gives the character the
kind of true haunting looks. Considering how the movie is narratively
understated, it is important to note how Phoenix brings fine emotional thrust to the
proceedings. The actor also instills Joe with innate decency that’s obvious in
the sweet banter he carries with his ailing mother, which only later makes his
raging inner battles more resonant.
Despite all the influences derived and a
masterful performance at the center, director/writer Ramsay’s minimalist yet
meditative form and aural-visual textures deserves lot more accolades. Working
with cinematographer Thomas Townsend, Ramsay provides us an emotional window to
see through Joe's eyes as he navigates his quickly unraveling
existence. And, on most occasions we are trapped with in Joe’s head-space that
we 'feel' the bad things than actually 'see' it.
Sound designer Paul Davies and Johnny Greenwood’s score deserve special
mention as they fill the quiet moments with sublime sounds and tones. Even
though the director’s previous film is also about a murderous male, this time
she adopts a more hard-edged male perspective. This one is a study of a physically strong
man who finds himself to be fallible. He can’t truly save others, or at least
save himself, and even falls short of killing himself. But the guy slowly
grasps for life through the suffocating burden of trauma. This is expressed in
a beautiful surrealistic moment as Joe swims up to the river’s surface. In
fact, there are other intriguing moments in the film which makes it more than a
remarkable exercise in style. For example, the way Ramsay undercuts brutality
by adding unanticipated moment of tenderness: a gruesome face-off between Joe
and a hired-gun ends on a strange note of singing, an incredible note of
sensitivity and compassion amidst ruthless acts. The plotting does seem too
lean and frustratingly fragmentary at times so as to wholly rely on the moments of startling ethereal imagery. Nevertheless, You
Were Never Really Here (90 minutes) is a precious little mood piece which
intimately studies a traumatized soul’s cracked psyche.
Trailer
1 comment:
interesting story telling
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