Once. Just once … I would like Joaquin Phoenix to play a guy who doesn’t look most at home in an abandoned bus terminal. I understand the idea of his resembling a man without the resources to groom himself adds a certain moral dichotomy to his character. In You Were Never Really Here, for instance, it takes until almost the midway point for us to figure out if Joe (Phoenix) is a good guy or a bad guy; nothing in his appearance gives away much besides the idea that he probably doesn’t shower much.
In a cheap hotel room, Joe removes the obvious evidence of his presence: food wrappers, a photograph, a bloody hammer. Everything gets bundled and tossed except for the photo of a grade school girl; that gets burned. The escape route and wary eyes tell us Joe doesn’t want to be seen, but he doesn’t scrub the room of his prints or anything so dramatic. He was really there; we could prove it if we wanted.
Outside in the hotel alley, Joe is attacked from behind by a thug. In one pivot and punch, Joe’s assailant goes down. Huh, he’s a tough muther, whoever he is. Taking the long way back (via the airport), Joe arrives at the home where he lives alone with a chatty mother (Judith Roberts). They seem to have a love-hate relationship. Does she know what he does? I’m guessing “no,” since we still don’t know what he does, either. All we know is he is no stranger to violence, has a salary that comes from envelopes hidden in the ceiling tiles of the local convenience store, lives without regards to personal appearance (ironically, he does care if the bathroom floor is wet), and has a mother he battles from time-to-time over trivialities. Who is this guy?
Well if the movie isn’t gonna give away the secret so easily, damned if I will, either. Unfortunately, this gives me almost nothing to talk about. So let me get straight to impressions I had of the picture — Homeless Thor here has more hammer time in this film than Oakland in the late 1980s … the most
since Oldboy. In the spectrum of mood v. plot, mood represents a healthy 90% of this film; it’s not as if the plot is nonexistent or amorphous; there are simply multiple scenes of Joaquin Phoenix playing a one-person game of “Plastic Bag Hoodie.” The temporary asphyxiation lends nothing to the plot, but gives us a fair idea of how suicidal Joe is. The presentation of said scene is not distant, but intimate, so close up in fact that it’s difficult to tell what’s going on until the camera pans out. And only after several long pauses and a wider pan still, we can see the choking is self-inflicted not the result of an improvised fight. Mood, dude.
You Were Never Really Here ain’t exactly a rollickin’ good time at the theater. Calling our “hero” “bruised” undersells the word “bruised” for many people. He is damaged to the point where somber is the only mood he knows, intimacy is almost certainly a non-starter, and violence is a norm. And yet, there are some truly bizarre moments of black humor in this film, my favorite being a mortally wounded man being force-fed drugs enough to sing along to disgusting pro-life 1970s cheese-ballad “I’ve Never Been to Me” in sounding his own death knell. Who are you, Lynne Ramsay? And why did you write that? I certainly don’t know … but I do appreciate moments that catch me off guard. Kudos, You Were Never Really Here; I will never really claim I wasn’t really here.
For a fella not short on cash
His acting choices seem rash
Strategy devising …
Is this Phoenix rising?
Or just a man-sized piece of ash
Rated R, 89 Minutes
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Writer: Lynne Ramsay
Genre: PTSD: a different look
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Vigilantes
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Children
