You Were Never Really Here

In my experience, when you go through something horrific, it stays with you in flashes. We all carry trauma differently, of course, but horror has always followed me around in glimpses.

Most movies and television shows do not depict trauma this way. In mainstream fiction, trauma stays with you for every second of every day. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. You can’t work. There is no room for life, no room for adjustment. In my reality, after some time has passed on pain, the effects of it sneak up on you when you least expect it. It’s a song playing in a grocery store, a person with a similar face, a stranger with a familiar smell. You experience these random things, and a flash of grief consumes you. But it does subside, if ever so slightly. You breathe, you calm down. And then you do the dishes, you go back to work; you adjust, you live.

Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), the lead character of You Were Never Really Here, experiences trauma like this. He’s walking down the street, minding his own business (or not), and he sees a reminder. That reminder triggers a flash of horror, and he pauses. He’s stuck, paralyzed by grief. His memory is his enemy. But he does regroup. He does breathe, and he does go about his day. These flashes do not entirely make sense to us, simply because they do not make sense to Joe. How do you explain the unexplainable? How do you clarify the horrors of war or the hell you endured as a child? The bitch of it is, whether you can rationalize your trauma or not, most of us are required to go about our day regardless. 

But given the path Joe is on as a result of the trauma he has experienced, a day for him looks very different than a day for myself.

Lynne Ramsay’s new film, You Were Never Really Here, is a masterpiece of modern cinema. I say that now, just as I will say it when I draft my list of my favorite films of 2018, and later, when I highlight the best movies of the decade. This is not hyperbole. This is not a sugar high. I won’t backtrack on this review once the film has settled in my mind. Point in fact, as each of the film’s brisk 90 minutes passed, I knew I was experiencing something new, and profound. Something that was taking risks in every aspect of filmmaking, from one frame to the next.

You Were Never Really Here is an operatic, underground crime, surrealist work of art that should be viewed (and reviewed) in its full visual form, not in snippets provided in trailers and reviews. There are many startling things about the film, most notable is that it contains themes that even casual filmgoers have seen recycled dozens of times. The hitman with a conscience, the underground brothel, the damsel in distress, the moody city atmosphere, the brutal revenge. However, I can confidently say that You Were Never Really Here handles these narrative themes in a way I have never seen in a movie before. This is a film that stands boldly, and proudly, on its own.  

But it does not stand easily. Lynne Ramsay makes challenging cinema, and You Were Never Really Here is no exception. To appreciate the film, you are required to lean forward and pay attention. The dialogue is written how people speak, which means there is very little explanation of action or motivation. The sound design is invasive and informs character, the cinematography is as gorgeous as it is compact, and the editing can be shockingly rapid. All of these aspects of the film (not to mention Jonny Greenwood’s haunting score, itself a character) are flawless, but they are not what we are used to seeing.

I have a feeling, for instance, that You Were Never Really Here will be labeled as an extremely violent film. I disagree. It is violent, yes, but the violence is real and never glorified. Punches hurt, headbutts render people motionless, and a bullet kills as efficiently as a single blow to the head with a hammer. There is no head-bashing slow motion, no blood sprayed out of fresh wounds, no large crowds of people flattened by a collapsing city. There is, instead, a realistic depiction of a very dark world. But what Ramsay chooses to show us of that world is far more tasteful than it would be in more sensationalized hands. Ramsay often cuts away from the violence, choosing instead to show us its immediate effect on the characters after the fact. Yes, a murder has just taken place, but how does that impact the people involved who are still breathing? 

Joaquin Phoenix’s quiet, brooding work as Joe rivals any performance the actor has delivered. Phoenix’s physical transformation (he gained a significant amount of weight and muscle for the part) is nearly as astonishing as his emotional arc in the film. This is a performance void of artifice; it is true and wholly authentic. Phoenix is so adept at informing us who Joe is, not with words, but with movement and expression. His body is as scarred as his mind. This is a fractured man, Travis Bickle of now, lost on his own. I relished following his every move, even if I didn’t always agree with his choices. This is, to be clear, screen acting of the highest order.

For more than two decades, Lynne Ramsay has made a career out of telling stories the way she wants to tell them. There is nothing conventional about her approach to narrative or character, and cinema is better off for it. She has, dare I say, eclipsed her acclaimed status with You Were Never Really Here. This is a demanding film that deserves to be seen, and studied, and remembered. 

A funny thing happened immediately after I saw the movie. I was walking around in a daze, utterly transfixed by what I had just seen. Suddenly, like Joe, something caught my eye that reminded me of a particularly troubling event in my life. A therapist might say I was looking for such a reminder, a sort of emotional transference based on the connection I had with the movie. Maybe. I froze for a moment, then kept walking. Joe might stop and brood. He might let that flash force him down another dark alley. But me, I just walked until I wasn’t bothered anymore. And somehow, strangely, I knew I had You Were Never Really Here to thank for that. How often does that happen? A+