You Were Never Really Here (2017): What Art Cinema Can Offer

     I just saw Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here (2017) at a small, ultra-modern cinema in London, called the Curzon, and I was absolutely floored by it. This is an arthouse film about Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), a hired gun assigned to rescue underage kidnapped sex slave Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), who he believes to be a politician’s daughter. The film follows Joe on his quest, and the consequences surrounding it. This film is a perfect example of the ever-expanding nature of what can be considered art cinema, and how it can be used to inform and critique well-known genres. So, let’s begin.

What is Art Cinema?

Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960).

     As a pretext for this discussion, let’s talk briefly about art cinema, and why You Were Never Really Here may or may not fit neatly into that category. Art cinema is a mode of film practice, the ideas, and techniques of which are descendant of both German Expressionism and French Impressionism. The most useful framework for understanding art cinema is examining its’ departure from classical Hollywood cinema, or, how it refuses to fit into its’ norms. While Hollywood's narratives are motivated by clarity, the art cinema narrative is motivated by two principles: realism and authorial expressivity. In opposition to characters in classic Hollywood cinema, characters in art cinema lack clearly-defined goals, are incredibly passive and can seem to ‘float’ from one scene to the next. The narrative structure can be loose, sometimes contradictory, and difficult to grasp- something the classic Hollywood narrative structure will try to avoid at all costs. Of equal prominence as the narrative is the presence of the author in the art cinema text. The author is so pronounced, David Bordwell, who is largely responsible for contemporary film history’s understanding of art cinema, argues that the director should themselves be seen as a formal element. They are responsible for shaping the way in which the film is comprehended, and for sewing together the two elements that would otherwise be distant (realism and the radical authorial expressivity).

Antonius Block plays chess with Death in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957)

I kind of hate Drive (2011).

     That’s where we come to You Were Never Really Here. It certainly demands that one question whether or not it is ‘purely’ art cinema- and I don’t think it is. YWNRH is deeply rooted in having a conversation with the action thriller genre- in fact, it appears that there is a new wave of small, independent, art films that wish to tackle this genre. Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011) and Bronson (2008), and Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room (2015), and Blue Ruin (2013) all come to mind. However, YWNRH unquestionably leads the pack. It has a distinct quality that the others seem uncomfortable to take on: a commitment to authorial expressivity through film form. 

Yes... I made this...

     Sure, Drive and Blue Ruin have psychologically complex characters and a great deal of ambiguity-both key aspects of art cinema- but neither of them uses editing, camera movement, sound design, or shot composition to express those concepts. Nevertheless, YWNRH is not fully ‘pure art cinema,’ like I said, because of its eagerness to converse with the action thriller. Something like The Seventh Seal, one of the pinnacles of art cinema, offers up an existential crisis on its own merits and unique narrative, whereas the narrative of YWNRH is incredibly familiar, almost trite. It inhabits an alternate dimension, one in which action films like Die Hard (1988) and Taken (2008) move beyond using narrative to tell their story, and instead, use film form. YWNRH exists in a radical, avant-garde, art-thriller limbo, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. 

Joe isn't just a killing machine, he has feelings too!

     But what I really want to discuss is how YWNRH uses art cinema’s concepts to twist and distort the action-thriller, until it becomes something entirely new. Let’s discuss three major departures.

The Hero Heals His Wounds

Joe's complex mental state is explored through form, not exposition.

     In the classic action film, the hero must always be injured. Repairing himself and licking his wounds are crucial to show off his tough, rugged persistence to overcome any obstacle, as he stitches himself together, or squeezes bullets from his body. Nearly every action movie has these scenes because they help establish the overall ‘look’ of the hero and encompass him in a rough blanket of gruff masculinity. YWNRH provides an interesting bend to this pattern. Joaquin Phoenix gets shot in the face early in the film and ends up having to pull a tooth out in a dark, grimy, back alley. Perfect! This is where action thrives! Let’s put that machismo on display! Hold on, wait- we do see Phoenix gruesomely pull a tooth, but, there is also a gorgeous, lingering, and evocative shot of his beard, shifting away from the violence. The lighting hits Phoenix’s slightly wet facial hair in such a way that it looks incredibly crystalline, complex, and magnificent- it’s one of the best shots in the film. At the moment when the action genre demands him to look his most manly and undefeated, Joaquin manages to look his most beautiful, and fragile.

Faceless, Dead Henchmen

Color is used measurably, and effectively.

     Another hallmark of the action film genre is the seemingly endless number of henchmen our hero guns down. People have even become obsessed with how many people John Wick has killed (spoiler alert, it’s 84). These people are faceless, ineffective, and inconsequential to the narrative of these films, reduced, in the case of John Wick, to just a number. In an intense sequence in YWNRH, Phoenix finds two suit-wearing, handgun-toting henchmen in his house, after they’ve just murdered his mother. Phoenix takes a breath and shoots both quickly. One dies instantly, but the other is very much alive and in pain. He pitifully crawls into the kitchen as Joe pours himself some water. Joe demands information from him, which the goon gives up, but he’s clearly more caught up in the realization that he’s about to die, and the scene takes a strange turn. Joe lays on the floor with him and gives him some painkillers. The henchman stares up at the ceiling blankly, and some excellent close-ups of his eyes reveal the total terror within them, so afraid to die. Inexplicably, he grabs Joe’s hand tightly, and Joe doesn’t let go. Even stranger, Charlene’s “I’ve Never Been to Me” begins to play on the kitchen radio, and they both sing (poorly) along to with it for what seems like a solid minute. The moment passes, and Joe looks over to see the henchman dead. This is a complete 180 on the trope of the classic violent thug- I assure you, you don’t even see 90% of the faces that John Wick kills. In this sequence, Ramsay’s commitment to showing the fate of this random baddie is both tragic and unexpected to the point where it’s almost funny.

Joe’s & Nina’s Relationship

Neeson is pissed in Taken (2008).

     Nina isn’t the typical action film damsel-in-distress. I would claim that in most revenge films in which our sympathetic, besieged white-guy hero is out to save someone, it’s normally his ‘property.’ My wife. My daughter. Yes, the film expounds upon how much he loves and cares about them, but ultimately, the bad guys who have kidnapped them have upset the balance of the normative nuclear family- something that must be rectified immediately. In YWNRH, Joe’s relationship with Nina is the total opposite. Beyond the fact that they have no relation and that there is no ‘status quo’ to return her to, Nina is absolutely Joe’s foil. It’s ironic that she is quite literally property in this movie (an underage sex slave, passed between powerful men), but she actually has quite a lot more agency than most of the damsels in distress that our Neeson's and Willis's are so fond of, and even takes out one of her own abusers in the end. 

Samsonov gives a subtle, yet tragic performance.

     Joe recognizes himself in Nina-they're both broken, detached, abused, and without any place to call home- and this is conveyed beautifully through film form. There is a recurring motif of counting down throughout the film: Joe has used it while he’s strangling himself with a plastic bag, and Nina seems to use it as a way of detaching herself from the horrific sexual abuse she suffers. Through both sound editing and superimposition (a technique Lynne Ramsay is fond of, and utilizes wonderfully), the image of young Joe and Nina become intertwined, and they count down together at recurring moments in the film. In addition to this, in a dream-like sequence during which Joe tries to drown himself, he changes his mind at the last minute to go rescue Nina. As Joe begins to surface for air, Ramsay cuts to show Nina underwater, right there with him, following him to the surface. Their fates are intertwined- it’s disturbing, tragic, and beautiful. 

YWNRH was marketed as a modern-day Taxi Driver (1976), only
because it features a psychologically complex and violent protagonist.

Final Thoughts

     I didn’t even discuss the incredibly ambiguous way Phoenix’s backstory is established, essentially all through complex and unobvious flashback sequences that remarkably bleed into the rest of the narrative, but I will refrain. The bullet wound, henchman, and Nina and Joe’s similarity, each with interesting, expressive, and beautiful elements of film form make a compelling case for why YWNRH exists at an interesting intersection between art cinema and action-thriller, the likes of which contemporary cinema hasn’t seen. I sincerely hope that we see more and more movies like YWNRH produced in the future, because films like this have the potential to offer a wealth of commentary on the inner workings that motivate the besieged white-guy action thriller that currently saturate the Hollywood market so pervasively. I can’t recommend You Were Never Really Here enough, and I’ll definitely be checking out Lynne Ramsay’s other films!

-Nick, March 21, 2018, 2:23 am, from a hotel room in London, England.