I’m conflicted. Lynne Ramsay’s (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) You Were Never Really Here is not a great movie. Yet it received an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and four stars on Roger Ebert’s website. A few times during my viewing, I wanted to say aloud, “This movie sucks,” but, of course, that is something I would not do. But you can imagine how surprised I was when the movie received applause after its conclusion. I was flabbergasted, but I was in an art theatre (this was the only place it was showing). It had been a good year and a half (Arrival) since the audience had last clapped after a movie. So, I decided to read a little about this movie and see what I missed that others saw. First, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance (Gladiator, Walk the Line) was excellent. He was so even and heavy as a down and outgun for hire suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from what he witnessed while serving in the military and from suffering from events of his childhood he was never able to process.
We’ve got something if we only look at Phoenix’s character as a character study. We’ve got something good we could build different stories around that would work. But this story? This story revolves around an issue many people will have a problem digesting. I understand that we want intrigue and surprises in the story, but not at the cost of what becomes the focal point of everything. Ramsay could have done the same thing with a twist on the story that wouldn’t have made us squirm so much that it could have been equally effective. Granted, this movie was adapted from an existing novel. Still, the plot could have been changed. Hence, my internal conflict.
As mentioned, Phoenix stars as Joe (we never learn of his last name). He’s a trained assassin who earns his cash by tracking down kidnapped girls and butchering their abductors. Joe seems equally concerned with covering his tracks as he is with ending his own life. He works alone and is so cautious that he prefers to go to a third party rather than talk to his handler face to face. We meet him after his most recent kill in a local hotel room in New York City. We don’t see a full shot of this scene. It primarily consists of fragments of some horrific event that occurred. But we do learn that someone has violently died, and it was at the hands of Joe.
We see a bloody hammer. We see duct tape. We also see a man with his head in a plastic bag, struggling mightily to breathe. We learn early that Joe’s PTSD might not be undiagnosed, but he hasn’t received the proper treatment to deal with it. His anger is harnassed. While committing these violent acts against thugs who, frankly, deserve it, he does so methodically. Also, it is not something that he enjoys at all. And even though rescuing kidnapped girls from men who do whatever they want to with them seems noble enough, it’s not something that comes close to relieving his symptoms and making him feel like a worthwhile person. He is obsessed with suicide, and probably what keeps him from committing this act is just how hard it truly is to do. While most of us aren’t suicidal, and even fewer of us have tried it, I’m sure many of us have imagined what it might be like, either through a period in our lives when we are struggling or knowing someone who has committed this act. And when we do so, we envision a person in immense pain who might struggle with the act because of how scary it is. And, of course, there are unsuccessful suicide attempts all the time. I won’t say much else about this movie’s component other than to say it is a recurring theme from its first scene until its last. Joe is a man who is in tremendous emotional and psychological pain.
Joe has no genuine relationships except for his mother (Judith Roberts – Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, Death Sentence), who he lives at home with and cares for. She is likely in the early stages of dementia, and it’s almost like she is the child and he is the parent in many ways. It’s ironic since Joe can barely care for himself. He doesn’t even want to care for himself. With his thick, gnarly beard, clothes that make him almost look like a homeless man, and a body that suggests he hasn’t worked out in years, Joe relies strictly on his military expertise to carry out the under-the-table transactions, each one providing enough money to, likely, take care of living expenses for sixth months or more. Joe never will stock shelves, wait on patrons in a restaurant, or work any desk job. Joe is a man who operates on his schedule, accepting jobs that will give him the biggest payout with the least amount of risk. That is why he cuts ties with his middleman after this man’s son saw him near the last crime he committed. Instead, he goes straight to his handler, John (John Doman – Blue Valentine, Mercury Rising). John informs him that his next assignment involves rescuing a girl named Nina, the abducted daughter of State Senator Albert Votto. The reward is $50,000 cash.
We never really learn how much Joe usually receives for completing his assignments, but based on his reactions, we can assume it is less than what he will receive for this assignment. It never really is a question of if he’ll do it. While careful not to get caught, Joe seems as interested in completing an assignment as he does in not achieving it if it results in his death. He casually gets the details from John before meeting with Votto to gain even more specifics. Votto provides the address of a brothel where he thinks his young daughter might be. The last thing Votto says to Joe is that he wants the captors to pay severely for what they’ve done, meaning he wants them to suffer immense physical pain before he kills them.
The remainder of the movie revolves around this mission. There is much more to it than I’ve just described because there is much more to it than was told to Joe by both John and Votto. Honestly, it’s a little unbelievable, not so much as the idea that a young girl is taken captive by people who use her for purposes that might make you sick, but because of the circumstances that got her there. What is remarkable, though, is how Ramsay chose to shoot the rescue. Most of the scenes from the brothel show Joe trying to find out where Nina is and harming those in the way, usually through an everyday hammer hitting those in his way like he would a rigid nail into a thick fence. But what’s cool is that all these shots are shown through security footage from cameras positioned throughout the building. It was unique. It didn’t make the movie any better or worse, but it was one of a few things that made this movie, which I didn’t particularly love, memorable.
I neither liked this movie nor appreciated any of it while watching it. But it is one of those movies that has stuck with me long after seeing it. It reminds me of Call Me By Your Name, a movie I didn’t love and certainly didn’t understand the hype. But it has stayed with me as much as any other movie of 2017 for some reason. I’ve come to appreciate it more and more, even though nothing happened in that movie when you think about it. And I’ve heard critics say the same thing in that sense. There is nothing similar about that movie, and You Were Never Really Here, other than that both movies stuck with me long after I thought they would. Maybe it was not just the outstanding performances but the steady performances of its leads. Call Me By Your Name earned Timothée Chalamet a Best Lead Acting Academy Award nomination. This won’t happen for Phoenix, but it doesn’t detract from his performance. Not all of his movies are massive hits, and he’s gotten a little bizarre over the years, but he always brings it. He has three Academy acting nominations (Walk the Line, Gladiator, The Master), and he could have more. He was brilliant in Her, a movie that could have landed in the laughable category without his knockout performance. But his steady performance in that movie, like so many others, elevated the overall movie.
I can’t recommend this movie. It didn’t offer much we haven’t seen before, and the twist in the film is enough to make some moviegoers sick. Nonetheless, it’s a movie that will stick with you, for better or worse. If you are a fan of either Phoenix or Ramsay, it’s a movie you’ll want to see. And if you want to see a film about a character that has been through so much that he has no regard for himself and cannot experience the same range of emotions that human beings should be allowed to experience, you’ll want to check it out. For everyone else, I can’t even recommend this movie when it’s available on streaming. It’s got a particular audience that will draw to it. I was certainly in that group, but it’s a movie that will land far from my end-of-year Top 10 list.
Plot 7/10
Character Development 8/10
Character Chemistry 6.5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 7/10
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 6.5/10
Hook and Reel 7/10 (it’s easy to get a little confused…I love movies that use flashbacks well…this wasn’t one of those movies)
Universal Relevance 6.5/10
75%
C+
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- First Reformed
- On Body and Soul
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