If you happen to see a poster featuring Joaquin Phoenix carrying a hammer with a frightened expression then think that this is a brutal action-thriller film like Oldboy, then you will be a bit of a nuisance. The palm will still be used, and indeed to beat people, but You Were Never Really Here is not a matter of action.
This is an action-thriller film that is not interested in the action but rather the psychological impact it generates. The film does not linger in action sequences, rather than emphasizing covert emotions and atmospheric games.
This is only the fourth long film from Lynne Ramsay, whereas its directing debut has been started since 18 years ago through Ratcatcher. In addition, You Were Never Really Here is also quite far from the previous Ramsay movie We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is 6 years old. And there's a reason behind it all. Ramsay is known as a filmmaker who will not compromise in any of his work, and he is also so in this latest film. He seemed not too concerned about the risk of audiences who would lose interest in a moment, which I'm sure will happen often.
With a minimalist duration for artsy movie size, just 90 minutes, the film tries to show as little as possible but conveys as much as possible what lies beneath the surface, up to a point that is sometimes confusing. Occasionally Ramsay will slip a sudden flashback. The narrative is almost abstract, but uniquely, it works in making the film move.
The first mistake we might make is to judge this movie before watching only on the premise of the clause on "Last Action Hero", whether you like the premise or hate it. Phoenix plays as Joe, a stocky, bleak looking man. The first time we saw Joe, his hands wiped the bloody hammer. Also seen a duct tape. Joe then burns a photo of a little girl. He seemed to be just doing something deadly. Could he be a serial killer?
It was not.
Joe's next client is an official (Alex Manette) who asks to save his son, Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov) who is allegedly trafficked in a place of underage prostitution. "They say you're brutal". "I can do that," Joe replied calmly, as calmly as Mendikbud responded in response to the UNBK participant's uneasiness through the meme. Of course, this ultimate mission will not go as smoothly as previous missions, because this time it involves a conspiracy of high-ranking officials.
A second mistake occurs when we focus too much on the plot of the conspiracy and then arrange the pieces of the story to form a straight narrative. That's not the point. In other more generic films, this premise would be a standard action movie. But Ramsay was not fixated on the plot. Instead, he uses it to explore the psychology of his character. In order not to get sidetracked, Ramsay positioned his action in the distance. We're not involved in it, either just watching it through CCTV cameras or just seeing the effects that follow.
This film can be regarded as a character study, and its character is one of the characters that is difficult to study. Wise action when we look at how Joe, who returns to "work", takes care of the aged mother at home. Or see the action that runs the credo "live shy, dead do not want", like wrestle yourself with a bag of crackle or stand over the safe limit at the train station. Or how he grasped the warm hands of the man he shot before he died. As he undressed, a scar appeared on his body. What happened to Joe? We do not know for sure, but from the piece of flashback, it seems he had experienced childhood as a child and PTSD when growing up.
Joe is a frightening but fragile man. He looked dazed, did not understand how time went on or even about his own sanity. Which is real, which is imaginary? His life was composed of pieces from the moment, and Ramsay's movie moved as if following Joe's thoughts. This is not so different from what Ramsay did in We Need to Talk About Kevin where we are brought into the mind of a woman who is made crazy because of her psychopath son. We do not really know chronologically when-happened-what, but we are made successful in catching his emotions.
As if the performance in his films ago was not intense enough, Phoenix appear very strong here. She throws herself and thicken her beard to give the impression of intimidation, but her cold, stiff expression reflects the vulnerability. Following the traditions of all sociopaths in the world of cinema, its innate to the smallest gestures seem very stressful. He is ready to explode at any time. Ramsay escalated this intensity with the percussive and distortive scoring of Jonny Greenwood, departing far from his work on the Phantom Thread.
You Were Never Really Here so trust the audience until he feels no need to explain. This film will not stop to explain clearly what happened. The author assumes we are intelligent and able to connect fragments into a single unit. We may also prefer to surrender ourselves to be drowned out by the narrative. And how do we not trust and just let go, lha we are in the hands of highly competent filmmakers.