You Were Never Really Here

Joaquin Phoenix in full glower

Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here strikes me as the most accomplished film of the year, yet my regard for it is a little dispassionate. This is an art film, a niche product that will make little impact upon the culture or my soul. Its most recent kin is the Safdie Brothers' Good Time without the kick of that film's Fun House psychedelia. Ramsay's direction is oblique and off putting. She cuts away from the violence to prevent the viewer from getting any catharsis out of the quest of Joaquin Phoenix's protagonist. He may be saving young girls, but the audience is not compelled to root for him as they do for Liam Neeson's kick-ass protagonists. Ramsay's most salient choice is to stress horizontals and grids throughout, making Phoenix stuck on repeat as if in a maze or video game. Going down corridors, across bridges, along streets he hurtles, always having the violence he commits come back at him karmically. Happily, some of these moments are among the most beautiful in recent cinema. Blurred lights glimpsed out of a speeding car. A crushed Skittle. Ramsay's vision is pitiless and gorgeous.

Phoenix's Joe is constantly having PTSD flashbacks which Ramsay treats elliptically. Given that the film concern trafficking in underage girls by politicians and other claptrap, it was a wise choice not to treat Jonathan Ames' novel realistically, but as a symptom of contemporary malaise, a fever dream. Phoenix is appropriately beefy and impassive, Ramsay has him reined in. The cast as a whole are controlled and memorable, particularly John Doman as Joe's fixer. I wanted to take a bath and watch a Maurice Chevalier musical at the conclusion, but You Were Never Really Here is well acted, superbly constructed, and memorable. (9/8/18)