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You Were Never Really Here

Saw this as a birthday treat at the Luna (free double pass with the Privilege Card) followed by a sub-par ramen. That's if you're in the camp that thinks 'sub-par' is a bad thing. To be fair, it may be only golfers that see 'sub-par' as a positive. But I digress. You Were Never Really Here (no shit, I just mis-typed Gere as the last word in the title and there's a whole new film!). More digression. I'll count to 39 or something.

So, Lynne Ramsey's fourth film after Ratcatcher, Morven Callar and We Need to Talk About Kevin certainly continues the trend of gritty realism but with a neat dichotomy. See, I reckon Joaquin Phoenix's character, Joe, would fit uncomfortably into a Marvel or DC film. He's a kind of chav Avenger, with none of the grandeur or witticisms but all of the emotion. Hawkeye with a hammer instead of a bow. And the film rides on Phoenix's bulky, bruised back. He's outstanding in this. The scene of him cracking a smile to himself in a mirror of a public sauna gave me the proper willies. A Cannes Film Festival prize for best actor was well deserved (Ramsey also landed one for adapting the screenplay).

The story is simple enough - troubled hard-man gets on the wrong side of some powerful establishment evil-doers and blood happens. The themes are equally prosaic - trauma (Joe had an abusive past), love (parental), brutality (hammer, above), revenge (you'll see) and maybe even hope (if I read it right...). But these seemingly straightforward aspects shouldn't detract from the big picture. You Were Never Really Here is more than the sum of its parts (those parts include Johhny Greenwood's ace score and Tom Townend's cracking cinematography). It moves along at a slow-burning pace until the conflict occurs and then it arcs up, only to slow down again until the next slice of viscera. It's sort of like the film version of a Pixies song.

One final note - I've been wracking my feeble mind for the relevance of the title and I'm still not happy with what it's come up with. The best it got was something to do with Joe's image of himself as a member of society. Not satisfied brain, lift your game!

See also:

Abel Ferrara's The Funeral (1996) and David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (2005) for other examinations of violent revenge.

SPOILERS IN POD!!!

Listen to "You Were Never Really Here" on Spreaker.

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