Hello fellow humans. Beautiful misfits and weirdos. This is Ágoston Hajnal speaking from the wilderness of London in the United Kingdom. I am a film enthusiast with many different passions and curiosities, a Master's degree in Film Studies and another one in journalism. I call this podcast my film odyssey.
If you are listening to this right now I'm glad we have bumped into each other in this over-saturated landscape of sound. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy.
This week we reach the 6th episode of Agoston’s Film Odyssey. Let's dive into Lynne Ramsay's 2017 thriller You Were Never Really Here starring Joaquin Phoenix and Ekaterina Samsonov. Credit goes to www.zapsplat.com for the soundscapes and sound effects. Without further ado, here it goes...
A shabby man is walking the hotel corridors. He's preparing a ritual with duct tape, a hammer, a burned photograph of a girl and many nondescript objects, their significance not yet known.
Adapted by writer-director Lynne Ramsay from Jonathan Ames' novel, You Were Never Really Here is a stunning evocation of PTSD and grappling with childhood trauma. Joe is a hired gun rescuing kidnapped girls. When he saves a politician's daughter he becomes a victim of foul play, with most parties turning up dead and more sinister interests lurking behind the assignment.
From Ramsey's point of view stems a wholly responsible yet visionary depiction of violence. In most scenes she only shows its psychic origin and its consequences, avoiding the fetishized displays of impact that genre pieces can rarely shake, if ever. Violence tells the story through off-screen sound, making the viewer fill in all the blanks and dream this nightmare together with its author.
The film is a marvel of rhythm and economy clocking in at less than 90 minutes without being either bloated, rushed, or superficial. So much depth is being expressed by such minimal narrative means that the film takes on the form of a haiku where the protagonist's subconscious is the landscape.
Joe's story is of someone turned into a vengeful ghost. The crux of his existence can be summed up by what he does. He is endlessly finding new ways to relive his childhood trauma where he gets to play out the Oedipal fantasy of killing his abusive father and saving his victimized mother. The ball peen hammer is the instrument of becoming one with the aggressor. He defiantly slouches despite the age-old advice, his body having blistered into a block of distended muscle mass, always ready to burst. He haunts long white halls and disappears into his surroundings. He is never really there quite literally due to his untraceable methods but also symbolically. His purpose is to relive and possibly rectify the past with no chance of any real connection with anyone beyond the remnants of his adolescence.
Ramsay and editor Joe Bini consciously play with jump cuts and blocking that makes the character appear evanescent. Many of the images in the film are about showing the spaces where the action takes place, rather than showing the action itself. Like a metaphysical declaration, only the spaces abide, while we're just passing through them at given times. Seconds, minutes, hours, days...lifetimes.
Thomas Townend's 2.39: 1 aspect ratio digital cinematography is also used counterintuitively. The widescreen format is usually employed for large vistas and landscapes. Here, it creates an eerie quality, as much of the film takes place at night or under low lights and either indoors with tight spaces or on the greyish streets of Queens, New York City. It makes the often centred, lone figure of Joe, his face and his body into a creased map full of details. His journey is both small in its intimacy and monumental in the heaviness it carries. The widescreen format also creates distance between the characters and renders them lost children in a lonely world. The background is often out of focus, further enhancing the feeling of defencelessness and unfamiliarity.
Ekaterina Samsonov is hypnotic as the damaged and haunted Nina. It is difficult to say when the abuse has started or if she has ever known anything different. There are moments to savour that are fleeting and ones that one wants to pass as quickly as possible but possess an eternal hold. Nina's and young Joe's countdowns tell of the need to break free of the pain, if even for mere seconds. Asphyxiation provides a relief and a temptation, a wall blocking out the outside world, a calming shadow kiss that whispers "This can be over in a few if you really want it to."
The film often turns into a fever dream of seemingly randomly connected sounds and images, but they are all part of the lead character's PTSD-addled perspective. The fragmentary flashbacks that establish Joe's relationship to violence and death are highly suggestive and beautifully unexplained. We can deduce that before becoming a hired enforcer, he served in Afghanistan and worked for the FBI trying to save victims of human trafficking. Phoenix's muscle-bound and weather-beaten body is used to express the character's voyage. It is one of the actor's most taciturn, lived-in, and embodied performances - easily one of his best. His live-wire energy is kept in check, displaying a simmer.
Ramsay even pulls on intertextuality to say more about Joe. Psycho is a sly reference to a mentally unstable and murderous man in a codependent relationship with his mother. In a home scene, he is wearing what looks like a child's pyjama shorts. The humour is both gentle and abrasive in these scenes, lightening the mood but also building the film's emotional centre and thematic scheme.
In the hotel room scene, The Shawshank Redemption hums in the background, telling us of a magical place where there is no memory. If only these characters could attain such peace. The only scene in which violence occurs visibly within the frame is here. A clean execution, then a sloppy brawl reflected by an overhead mirror split by a gunshot, ending in a broken neck and a crescendo of drones. This visual-aural distinction signals the split within Joe. It has already become personal, with no choice but to save the girl, again. It is not the familiar plot that makes You Were Never Really Here remarkable, but Ramsay's unique point of view and her nimble leading man.
The sun's splendour appears in the midst of death where the point of no return and the possibility of rebirth morph back and forth into one another. Johnny Greenwood's score is fraught with chaotic discord for 90% of the film, then it unexpectedly transforms into luminous harmony. When Joe cannot fulfil his revenge fantasy it completely throws him. This is a deconstruction of the vigilante anti-hero, made into a passive child who lost his purpose in the wilderness of his own mind. With the roles switched, Nina, who was brave enough to kill her first and original boogeyman instead of his copies, becomes the adult. Now that they are both victims and each other's protectors, can they find a way out of the darkness?
Sometimes, hope can be terrifying.
Outro: Hello fellow humanoids! True originals. If you are still listening or just joining us now I am Ágoston Hajnal and this is my film odyssey. Please check out my website for more content. It is www.agostonsfilmodyssey.com. That is A.G.O.S.T.O.N. You can also follow me on Instagram, X, Facebook, and Tumblr, links are in the description. Thank you for coming with me on this journey and I hope to see you next time.