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Thread: YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (Lynne Ramsay 2017) - PARIS

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    YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (Lynne Ramsay 2017) - PARIS

    A thrilling way to end my Oc.-Nov. Paris Movie Journal. And it was the last thing I saw.

    LYNNE RAMSAY: YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (2017)


    JOAQUIN PHOENIX AND EKATERINA SAMSONOV IN YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

    Hard going

    Lynne Ramsay's Cannes prizewinning You Were Never Really Here, which got the Scottish writer-director the Best Screenplay award at the festival and its star Joaquin Phoenix Best Actor for his performance as a saintly, suicidal tank of a hit man, is a tightly woven concentrated gem, one that will disturb you and lodge in your head. If of this adaptation of a Jonathan Ames novella (the author of "Bored to Death" did this?) it may be claimed it was thrown together at the last minute for Cannes - whatever speed and shortcuts the process involved - this is an amazing movie whose elegantly fused, hallucinatory and riveting story, acting, music, editing and directing create something like a wholly new experience. Though ostensibly set and shot in New York, I kept thinking of the South, and the images evoked the color still photography of William Eggleston. This is a sign of how many separate, but fused, levels the film works on, and a tribute to the eye of dp Thomas Townend, but also to the set designers and location-hunters (the governor's mansion is wonderful, a dreamy thing out of World of Interiors). The score rivets and staples everything together with a neat blend of hitting you over the head and creeping up on you. It's by Jonny Greenwood. The editor is Joe Bini, and I don't mind that at moments I said to myself, "That was a neat edit!" as I watched: that's part of the separate-togetherness that is the miracle of this movie's collaborative fusion.

    Phoenix moves through this like a clumsy steamroller, and only subtly shows changes of feeling, but the movie is about him even if we seem to be spying on him, even from surveillance cameras, as when he goes through the pedophile wing of a brothel to liberate a young girl and inflict pain on the employes of this gruesome place. As he would not look too closely at the mayhem, the camera rarely does. (We see the hammer he wields.) Also, he uses only the minimum words, as when he calls his boss from a pay phone and says only, "It's done." Only that line memorably signals the theme of disorder because, mainly, it's not done. It's undone.

    But sometimes there are flashback glimpses of an abused childhood that give him a special link with this girl, Nina (the excellent Ekaterina Samsonov), the daughter of a politician State Senator Williams (Alessandro Nivola) who has hired him to save her.

    Certain images stick, though I'd say this is a movie that, however searing and unpleasant, obsessive and brutal, it is, also may need to be rewatched and studied closely - savored - to ponder further, not its plotline or its "meaning," but the beauty of its edits and sound and image. But one image is Joe (Phoenix) taking off his shirt, uncomfortable, confined, unable to bear being covered any more; of him in a steam bath, framed up close (many of the images of him feel tight and confined). Another of course is the much-commented-upon one of Joe lying on the floor hand-in-hand with a man he's just fatally shot, while they bleed and sing Charlene’s “I’ve Never Been To Me." And of course it all starts with the homely image of a face choking inside a plastic bag, in one of Joe's numerous unsuccessful (experimental?) suicide attempts.

    Another key and unique element of the film/story is that Joe is a brutal steamroller of a fixer-punisher-killer, but also sweet and filial; that he is humanized by returning when off assignment to his childhood home in Queens with his mother (Judith Roberts), whom he takes tender slightly humorous loving care of.

    The story is of order turning to disorder. Joe deals with and in disorder, but his job is to restore order. But when the vice ring turns out to touch high places, the center will not hold, and all separations of job and private fall apart.

    This is also a world of hallucination, perhaps the hallucination of a war veteran; at moments one may wonder if everything we are watching is a hallucination. Wouldn't it be nice to think so?

    The style isn't that of a horror thriller; it's above that. Its horror is also more that of a first-time crime movie, or an art film. But because it's working on all twelve cylinders every minute, you will never think of the fey detachment of what the words "art film" suggest. It's just that Ramsay works a little outside commercial convention in crafting her murder and mayhem. And Here is the better for that.

    The French release title is A Beautiful Day and is 90 minutes long. . The AlloCiné press rating is 3.4; there is admiration, but Cahiers du Cinéma calls it a "turkey." Wider and English-language reviews are a lot warmer: Metacritic 88%. Opened in France 8 Nov. Watched opening day at MK2 Saint Germain. Coming to the US 23 Feb. 2018, UK 9 Mar. 2018.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 11-24-2017 at 10:48 AM.

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    Sounds fabulous Chris.
    Thanks for another great review. I hope Paris was wonderful. Sounds like it was.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

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    Thanks. It is. Yes, it was - I saw a lot of French films this time, if I may have seen more exciting ones previously. Back home now.

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    You Were Never Really Here opens this weekend, in NYC at least, and the week after in San Francisco. Fans or Lynne Ramsey, Joaquin Phoenix, and cinema with edge or originality should not miss it.

    Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete also opens tomorrow night at Angelika & Paris Theaters, and is coming to AMC theaters all over. (I have not reviewed it.)
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-04-2018 at 06:04 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
    You Were Never Really Here. Fans or Lynne Ramsey, Joaquin Phoenix, and cinema with edge or originality should not miss it.
    Indeed. Couple of comments...

    Interesting for such a sparse screenplay to be judged "Best" (Cannes). Ramsey states the film was not finished when shown there; it's revealed in her Film Comment interview, for example, that flashbacks to the protagonist's war experience were part of what was deleted from the finished version.

    I like how the three, sweet pop songs in the soundtrack clash with the score. There's one girl-group, early 60s ditty that is totally anachronistic and creates such an uncanny effect.

    Ramsey's style is original so it makes sense to recommend to fans of the cinema of originality. And yet, the movie is so totally upfront, self-conscious, and clear (obvious?) about its repeated allusions to Psycho and Taxi Driver.

    All films are fragmented in a way; plot does not include the parts of the story that are boring, that we can assume or infer. You see a shot of a character entering a building and then you see a shot that shows the character meeting someone in a seventh floor office. There's no need to show how the character gets up there. Ramsey's films often remove shots that would not conventionally be removed. Example: There's a shot of Phoenix looking at the governor's mansion and then there's a shot that reveals that he has ALREADY killed the entrance guard. There is a LOT of this type of radical fragmentation in her films. One important influence or pioneer of this style is Nicholas Roeg. I kept thinking about
    DON'T LOOK NOW (1973)...
    Last edited by oscar jubis; 10-21-2019 at 07:31 AM.

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    i always liked Roeg

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