5/8/18 - You Were Never Really Here (2017) - 8-/10

Winding Refin meets Michael Mann as they wish upon a Scorsese dream, resulting in a wholly unique voice. It is a hard film that sits like a dark passenger with you long after the credits end. A bitter existential melancholy and coiled around brutal loneliness. It is extraordinarily crafted and singularly hypnotic. A wondrous should-see.

Like a new Taxi Driver and Deathwish in so many bold ways, but with a tender heart, a cracked soul, and a lack of desire to titillate or exploit. In fact, it is very little like those violent precursors really. It is doing something so much deeper and passionate. As sweet in a bizarre way as it is sadistic. It is dark and bleak but for purpose. It somewhat reminds me of of a tortured and bloody Igby Goes Down, in a way.

Phoenix his posture, his slouch, his inward speaking and downtrodden demeanor. His relentless lostness, in this world and his life. He hides in each scene and skirts the edge of our view, even when front and center. His hollowness and subsumption drown our view of his life in a murky inhumanity. His is a story of a people lost the under the floor boards and between the cracks of normalcy; broken, dirty, and marginal.

There’s a measured and passionate serenity that makes the shocking violence punctuate even more intensely. The music pumps and blazes, a display of the pulsating intensity behind the eyes of Phoenix. His damage pours through the speakers in a neo-noir synth disco bounce and the painful harmonics of old-timey radio pop fluff, forever haunting him and the tortured youth around/inside.

Something so fascinating about the withholding of the violence. It is not that it doesn’t exist or isn’t ever seen, but so often this film simmers in the preparation and dwells in the unsatisfying results. It flips expectations and plays with the genre, dolling out a shuddering tart instead of the sweet ichor one expects from the hypervioloence. It sits so heavy on the stomach that it leads one to wonder why we would even want the violence and horror. Is there something wrong with us? Especially as we see a life consumed by violence that only leads to pain and self-destruction, not some superhero valor.

This film certainly isn’t for everyone. Most of it moves like an angst ridden ghost, haunting the shadows of our own pain and the darkness that creeps at our edges. Even if you are into the depressing hopelessness, it can bash you with its cacophonous and stylistic blackjack. But for me, I relished the grim and vicious story it told. Moments like a shared sweet song of dying are so amazingly exceptional and lasting. YWNRH was a gorgeous and crushing experience that I adored.