You Were Never Really Here

The arthouse take on a well-worn action, thriller or gangster trope often turns out to be one of the highlights of any given year in film.

Free Fire was last year’s prime example and it seems, in recent times at least, to be a motion firmly put in place by the sublime Drive.

You Were Never Really Here is Lynne Ramsay’s fourth Directorial feature and comes six years after her last. This slow and methodical gap in time is an apt description of the film itself which is a haunting and visionary small-scale tale of a gun-for-hire tasked with rescuing a Governor’s daughter from a child prostitution ring.

Sounds a little like Taken then? Far from it; this is told in dramatically different fashion with a slow, deliberate approach designed to perch you on the edge of your seat and hold you there for eighty minutes.

It’s virtuoso filmmaking with lingering shots adding to the unsettling mood; the camera sticks on scenery for just a fraction too long for comfort and adds to the scary cutaways to lead character Joe’s traumatic past; there’s enough there to feel his pain but we’re never shown the full origin tale.

Joaquin Phoenix is immense in the role. A hulking, shuffling presence he has all the hallmarks of the brutal killer he portrays but offers so much nuance, pathos and heart to make the character appealing. It’s a quite remarkable portrayal and stands out in a career not exactly short of amazing, stand out performances.

The score as well by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood becomes almost as important a character of the piece. Capable of horror and comfort you’re never sure what to expect and it’s especially intelligent in its contrapuntal moments.

Ramsay is able to portray horror and gruesome violence without once being overly explicit. We join scenes after violence has occurred or see it from afar; one rescue is brilliantly shown through sepia CCTV footage before bursting into colour.

There’s light amidst the darkness too; Joe sings to comfort a man he’s just shot and a certain underwater sequence is strikingly beautiful. Exquisite cinematography at its best. Nothing’s wasted either; if you think a certain shot is redundant it’ll come back to haunt you later as more is revealed.

A small-scale tale immaculately told. One to quicken the pulse. It’s arthouse, sure, but not for art’s sake and the work of a visionary Director. Hauntingly brilliant.

4 stars ****