A year after its premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the festival’s Best Actor and Best Screenplay trophies, Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here is finally really here, and it is filmmaking at its most ambitious, most macabre, and most masterful. It transmutes a potboiler to poetry, injecting what would be a serviceable thriller with lyricism, tragedy, and surrealism. Simply put, You Were Never Really Here represents creativity in film unlike any other in recent memory.
he plot follows Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), a combat veteran and former FBI agent turned hitman who rescues victims of sex trafficking and his most recent assignment to rescue the abducted daughter of a New York State Senator. The plot is decidedly platitudinous and is reminiscent of the plot of Taken. Unlike Taken, however, where protagonist Bryan Mills’s daughter was caught in the crossfires of the principal abduction plot, Joe has no such personal involvement to the case in hand. It's ironic then that You Were Never Really Here is a far more personal film than Taken.
The key differentiator between Ramsay’s film and the actioner is how invested the former film is in its protagonist’s essence. You Were Never Really Here has the balls to dig deep into the conscience of Joe. Yet on paper, You Were Never Really Here decision to invest itself primarily in its protagonist isn’t new as well. It’s something that has been accomplished to tremendous success with films like Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. Ramsay doesn’t let this deter her, however, as she knows exactly what cinematic approach best suits Joe’s story. Ultimately, her approach with Joe’s story is unlike anything ever witnessed in the history of film.
Ramsay guides her audience through Joe’s internal self with flashbacks. Flashbacks are a common dramatic device, but Ramsay’s use of flashbacks subvert what we have come to expect of one. Brusque yet feverish, Ramsay’s take on the device is authentic. Joe is imprisoned in a perennial predicament, tortured by traumatic experiences. Joe’s unusual choice of weapon, a ball-peen hammer, serves as a reflection of some of his traumatic experiences. Realism isn’t Ramsay’s objective. She throws surrealism into the mix. Ramsay intends for us to apprehend that Joe is an unreliable narrator, haunted by apparitions of violence of his past and the violence that awaits him.
Ramsay’s vision is accentuated by the cinematography of Thomas Townend and the score of Jonny Greenwood.
Thomas Townend’s cinematography plays a fundamental role in accomplishing Ramsay’s desired result of a poetic thriller. There is one scene in particular that involves an underwater burial which had my jaw dropping because it was so beautiful. The cinematography manages up-close with Joe, scrutinizing his every minute action and granting the audience the ability to connect with Joe on an intimate level.
On the other hand, Jonny Greenwood concocts music that at one moment captures Joe’s anguish and at another soothes the soul. Greenwood is one of our greatest living film composers, and his score for You Were Never Really Here is touted to be his finest to date. I prefer his Oscar-nominated score for Phantom Thread, but there is no doubt that Greenwood miraculously captures the several nuances of Joe’s internal self.
Ultimately, for a film focused this much around its protagonist, its emotional effect boils down to its lead performance. Having won the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor trophy, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance serves as the heart of the film. As the film’s troubled antihero, Phoenix imbues Joe with an authentic sense of tragedy and a muddled sense of what’s moral. His eyes beam with sadness, making it difficult to not sympathize with him.
In the end, You Were Never Really Here is pure cinema. It’s a film that understands the power of its medium and utilizes it to full effect to overwhelm its audience in a tale of grief, loss, and violence. It’s the kind of filmmaking that rarely gets made. As a result of its audacity and creativity, You Were Never Really Here deserves the attention of cinephiles around the globe. I recommend this film in a heartbeat. It is bound to be a classic and shall be recognized for how it deftly controls the audience’s emotional response. Don’t miss this one!