Don’t
be surprised if authoritarian advocates of the nanny state start agitating for
restrictions on the unregulated sale of hammers. After all, they easily to
conceal and potentially lethal. That is why they are the weapon of choice for “Joe,”
a psychologically tormented vigilante, who specializes in rescuing teen
runaways from white slavery. Unfortunately, Joe’s death wish might get
fulfilled in Lynne Ramsay’s You Were
Never Really Here, which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Aside
from his aged mother, Joe has little contact with the outside world. Most of
his jobs come through intermediaries. He works outside the law, invisibly
passing through the low-rent no-tell motels where his prey can be found. Through
flashbacks prompted by auto-asphyxiation (with no erotic component), we come to
understand the abusive childhood he suffered. Apparently, it was all at the
hands of his father, because the empty hulk of a man still dutifully cares for
his elderly mother. She is clearly declining physically and mentally, but she
still seems to recognize her son.
Joe’s
deliberately withdrawn life will be up-ended by his latest assignment. Distraught
State Senator Votto retains his services to save his daughter Nina. Initially,
it seems like business as usual, but the job mires Joe in a political
conspiracy largely beyond his comprehensive and mostly outside the scope of the
picture. Regardless, bad guys with guns and badges are coming for him—and the
handful of people he knows.
Joaquin
Phoenix bulked up De Niro-style for a quietly harrowing performance that just
might be a career best. As Joe, he broods and seethes like nobody’s business,
but he never resorts to cheap theatrics. It is work that seems to dredge up genuine
pain buried deep within. Seriously, Phoenix really is everything reports from
Cannes cracked him up to be. Yet, Ramsay sometimes gets in the way with her
attempts to put her own narrative-fragmenting stamp on the material. We do not
need the constant intrusion of flashbacks to childhood and suicidal fantasies.
We totally believe he is profoundly damaged already.
Despite
Ramsay’s showiness, young Ekaterina Samsonov matches Phoenix’s taciturn
intensity as the equally haunted Nina. They develop an awkward but poignant
rapport that makes YWNRH something
like the art-house analog of Man on Fire
(either one). Judith Roberts is also tragically convincing and compelling as
Joe’s ailing mother, while John Doman adds some gritty genre color as McCleary,
Joe’s employment agent.
The
cast is devastating, but stylistically, this is a case where less would have
been more. Nevertheless, Phoenix and company power through Ramsay’s fractured
prism. Ultimately recommended as a flawed but visceral character study of a
flawed but viscerally-driven man, You
Were Never Really Here screens again tonight (1/27) in Park City, as part
of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
