One ill fated David Letterman interview. That’s all it took to drop Joaquin Phoenix from the heights of Hollywood acting to a strange man that confuses audiences. It’s really too bad, because when Phoenix’s name shows up on a movie’s billing, it should get you really excited because of how talented he is. Case in point: You Were Never Really Here. Phoenix is asked to do so much without really saying anything, a feat only the greatest of actors could make compelling cinema.
Not much of a plot for You Were Never Really Here. Joe (Phoenix) as you’ll learn, is a war veteran who has seen some stuff, and is clearly going through PTSD. In real life, he works as a fixer, trying to help parents find runaways on the down low. Things take a crazy turn when a Senator (Alex Manette) asks Joe to find his daughter Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), where Joe gets caught in a web of powerful people while still dealing with his horrifying past.
I think I wrote more words than were actually said in this movie. Writer/Director Lynne Ramsay is adapting a Jonathan Ames novel that must be about the inner monologue of Joe, the hero. Movies like that are tough adaptations: most directors opt for voiceover to explain what’s going on, but that often gets used as a crutch to explain things maybe the movie isn’t being clear about. Ramsay bravely goes the other way: we just live in the silent despondence of Joe and his awful day to day existence. Ramsay’s goal is to help people understand what life is like after something awful happens to you. Joe has to live this life where the thing he’s great at also triggers flashbacks to awful situations in his past where he loses track of where he is and his past merges with his present for a period of time. The flashback scenes aren’t long, but they give you a general idea of how awful Joe was raised and how amazing it is that he turned out even remotely normal. We also see some coping mechanisms used to hide these awful memories. Joe uses dry cleaner bags because he used that as a kid, and poor, poor Nina uses what is one of the worst forms a countdown can take. These coping mechanisms are necessary because of the world Joe and Nina find themselves in, where extreme violence and abuse is commonplace (Ramsay makes sure the audience knows this), but we hope that they rise above it, and that these violent outbursts they have are just due to the world they are in and not a character flaw. All credit in the world to Phoenix and Samsonov, who dig deep to convey levels of despair only previously read in a Dostoevsky novel.
There’s a movie that You Were Never Really Here reminded me of: A Walk Among the Tombstones. The setup is very similar: a guy (in this case Liam Neeson) lives a not so great lifestyle because of the awful events of his past rejiggered the course of his trajectory. You Were Never Really Here, like the Liam Neeson film, is very well made art, but is really hard to watch in real time. Slow motion car wrecks only work if the bleakness in the story has some hope interspersed within the screenplay, but You Were Never Really Here is so unquestionably bleak that you might just tune out before any hope arrives, if any – and I’m still not sure there is any. Also, Ramsay’s style to get us into Joe’s world, as shocking as it can be, is pretty boring for the first 30-45 minutes. The goal is clearly to show how minimalist Joe has become to cope with himself, but that means we get lots of sad Joaquin Phoenix walking from task to task VERY slowly, which made me tune the movie out until the revenge story kicks in. As much as I appreciate Lynne Ramsay abiding by the great screenplay motto Show Don’t Tell, perhaps she showed a little too much and maybe could have told us just a little more.
What happened to Lynne Ramsay and Joaquin Phoenix? Are they ok? You Were Never Really Here makes me wonder what’s going on with these poor people, and in general, how hard it must be to go through life after you witness something terrible, and the crazy mechanisms you have to go through to keep those events from invading your thoughts. I’m gonna go curl up in the fetal position now….