Mar 11, 2018

REVIEW: You Were Never Really Here


'What follows is not really a thriller, any more than a Francis Bacon painted   society portraits. Adapted from Jonathan Ames book, it does to Liam Neeson revenge-flicks roughly what Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver did to the Death Wish movies: it breaks the genre up and boils it down to a lean 85 minutes, driven by a central performance by Phoenix as bruised and bloody and tender as sirloin. If the test of great acting is to make it physically impossible to imagine the actor in any other role than the one you were watching, then Phoenix here nuzzles up to the greats. He acts with his entire body, the way the silent movie actors used to, starting with his shoulders, hunched like a grave-digger’s, and moving down a white, pudgy paunch, lacerated with scars and slack with self-neglect, as if the harm he doles out to others is just overflow from the harm he dishes out to himself. Some actors make you worry for what they will do to others. Dangling himself idly from a train platform, Phoenix makes you worried for what he will do to himself.  Sometimes suicidal is more dangerous that homicidal. The performance is, in other words, everything Ryan Gosling thought his was in Drive and wasn’t. The violence, when it comes, is almost a relief from from the twitchy flashbacks— images of asphyxiation from to Joe’s childhood, and his experience in the Gulf war — that assail him like panic attacks. Ramsay’s powers of obliquity come into their during Joe’s one-man invasion of a brothel, shot and edited using only grey security cam footage showing Joe’s path: a door opens on one floor, a hammer  blurs in the corridor of another, a body crumples in a third and so on, all to the sound of Rosie & the Originals ‘Angel Baby’ on the soundtrack, interrupted with every cut. What Ramsay seems to understand as perhaps no filmmaker has since John Boorman in Point Break,   is that what makes violence violent is not physics it’s internal thermodynamics: the damage done to souls not bodies. It’s a film about damage.'— from my Sunday Times review

10 comments:

  1. If you are looking for the Software Engineering Help assignment then in this case you can opt for our Economics Assignment Help.we provide the best Help with economics assignment.We also provide Demand Forecast Assignment Help for students across the globe. for more information contact us +16692714848.


    ReplyDelete
  2. You made some decent points there. I looked on the internet for the issue and found most individuals will go along with with your website.

    Conorneill.com
    Information
    Click Here
    Visit Web

    ReplyDelete
  3. The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually thought you have something interesting to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix if you werent too busy looking for attention.

    Businessadviceforum.com
    Information
    Click Here
    Visit Web

    ReplyDelete
  4. I’d have to check with you here. Which is not something I usually do! I enjoy reading a post that will make people think. Also, thanks for allowing me to comment!

    Information
    Click Here
    Visit Web
    Bigpictureclasses.com
    Information

    ReplyDelete
  5. I personally believe that the word “diversity” has multiple definitions

    ReplyDelete
  6. service which means an equal connection of different colors.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Great write-up, I am a big believer in commenting on blogs

    ReplyDelete
  8. Keep working, great job ! Feel free to visit my website;

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thank you for time properly spent looking over this article.

    ReplyDelete