![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Review: You Were Never Really Here (2017)
You Were Never Really Here was unsettling but beautiful. The story is straightforward. Rather, where it shines is how it tells us the story, vividly from the point of view of our main character, including all of the memories that cloud his thoughts and influences who he is.
I would put a trigger warning on this movie for violence and implied child sexual abuse. I felt that the movie did its best to pan away, or show such violence off screen, but the effects of such harm were no less stark. Otherwise, I quite liked this movie.
Spoilers.
Story
Joe was a hitman. The beginning of the movie introduced us to him. We saw that he did not shy away from violence, and that he had a caring relationship with his mother.
Joe was given a job to rescue the teenage daughter of a politican, Nina Votto, who was supposedly at a brothel. Joe rescued her, but she was promptly kidnapped by some people in police uniforms.
Afterwards, Joe's friends and acquaintances were being killed one by one by these so-called authorities, including the mother he loved so much. We learned that the politician's rival, Williams, was behind this, and that he had wanted Nina for himself.
After burying his mother, Joe tracked down Williams and found all the security personnel dead, and Williams dead. It was implied that Nina had killed him herself.
Joe and Nina then took off, free to go anywhere they wanted. Joe briefly had a thought about committing suicide, but we saw that it was actually just a thought.
During the movie, I wondered: Who was it who was never really there? Was it Joe, or was it Nina? When Joe went to find Nina at Williams' home, and saw that Williams was dead, he called himself weak, because he was unable to save Nina. Later, we saw that Nina had killed Williams herself. So I think Joe thought himself weak, that Nina had never really needed him, and that was why he had considered suicide.
On the flip side, I sometimes wondered whether Nina was just an apparition, a hallucination that Joe had thought up of, who would help him get out of this assassination business. We never saw Nina interact with Votto or Williams on screen, so can we be sure that the Nina that Joe saw was actually Nina Votto? A possibility was that Joe couldn't find Nina at the brothel, but Williams was alerted to his presence and that was why his friends and acquaintances were being hunted down. Then, later, Joe also failed to find Nina at Williams' house, but that was his opportunity to start his life fresh. Another possibility was that Joe had saved another girl, but she still gave Joe the strength to leave. I think it's still most likely that the girl that Joe saved was Nina, but I thought it was an interesting thought to pursue.
I really enjoyed how this story wrote Joe's character. He had past trauma, but none of it was explained or sensationalized or romanticized. They just made up who he was, and influenced how he thought. He often thought of hiding in the closet wrapped in plastic while his parents fought, which was why he found comfort in suffocating. That wasn't something that made him "weird," or affected how he operated in his day-to-day life, it just was.
The actual dialogue and writing in this movie was actually quite minimalistic, but it worked well with the direction style.
Production
The directing was BEAUTIFUL. I looked up the director, Lynne Ramsay, and out of her other films, I've only seen We Need to Talk About Kevin, but I watched it many years ago on a plane, so I may need to rewatch it when my mind is less fuzzy lol.
I really liked how Ramsay approached the portrayal of Joe's character, how we saw his thoughts flit in and out of his mind. Nothing was overexplained, because when it is, we may intellectualize the character too much, which is sometimes good, but in the case of Joe, I think he wants really hard to show that he's learned to control his trauma. Of course, he has hangups, that's expected, but he doesn't let it dictate his moral compass, and I think the direction style really propped that up.
The visual aesthetics of the movie were great too. The atmosphere of this movie was very distinct. It was quiet and gave us a lot of time to stew in Joe's thoughts, or to appreciate the frame.
I think I was rather neutral about Joaquin Phoenix before this movie, but this movie did make me like him more. I think he played the character of Joe trying to be normal very well.
Characters
Joe
Joe was The main character of the movie. This movie was very much his journey, maybe even more than it was a thriller.
As we know, he underwent much trauma, including having an abusive father, as well as serving in the military and seeing violence among children. As an adult, Joe was very sensitive to violence against women and children.
I think Joe became a hitman because he had a limited skillset as a former soldier. The way that he acted on his missions was extremely matter-of-fact. I thought it was interesting that Joe was so sensitive to violence against women and children, but he did not hesitate to be violent to the people he was assigned to kill or security personnel that got in his way. Maybe he saw men differently from women and children. That being said, when he accosted the errand boy for the brothel, I did think he was a little gentler with him than he would have been with, say, a security guard.
My guess is that Joe wants to be kind wherever possible. He's not the most emotionally adept guy, like when he was asked to take a picture for the young women on the street, but I think he wants to be nice. And I think he wants to protect these innocent things in life, like love and friendship and happiness, and he uses his skillset to do that, by being violent against those who are evil.
As mentioned, Joe seemed to struggle with feeling "useless." Before, Joe's mother gave him the strength to keep going. We saw that they had a terrific relationship. Like all old ladies, she had some instances of dementia, some bad habits, etc. but they loved each other a lot. So when she was killed, I really felt sorrow for Joe. They'd been through so much.
Joe felt so useless that he had let the police take Nina away to Williams, and he felt useless that Nina had to fight herself at Williams' house. When Nina went away at the diner, Joe contemplated killing himself, and in his mind, he felt that nobody would notice or care. But Nina came back, told him to wake up, and that it was time to go, because it was a beautiful day. I think Nina gave him strength, and told him that what he had done was not for nothing. He had also given her courage, by being there for her, and that counts for something too. And I think Joe realizes that caring for someone doesn't only mean providing for them and protecting them, being there for them emotionally is very important too.
I'm so pleased that Joe had his happy ending. He deserves it ;_;
Mother
Joe and his mother had a very close relationship. When Joe's mother mentioned that she had watched Psycho, I wondered if she was a figment of Joe's imagination. Maybe she was someone who was never really there. After all, we never saw her interact with anybody other than Joe. Perhaps she was a representation of something that the assassins had killed, and that by burying her, Joe was forced to come to terms with moving on in his life.
In any case, I never once thought Joe's mother to be someone weighing him down. We saw that he was a happier person with her. They had helped each other through terrible times.
I also never felt that Joe had wanted to get revenge for his mother, probably because he know that violence is only an answer when protecting or helping someone, and revenge is not going to get his mother back.
The scene where Joe buried his mother was very touching, and even after burying her, I felt that his mother always gave him strength.
Nina
Nina was Votto's teenage daughter who'd been kidnapped. I'm not really sure how Votto got the address of the brothel. My impression was that Votto had been pimping Nina out, and he was putting Joe onto the brothel in order to bring him down. I read a Reddit thread here that theorized that Votto wasn't her father, but just another jealous John. Some of the commenters mentioned that Nina's mother had committed suicide, maybe because she knew about the abuse, but otherwise, whether or not Nina was really Votto's daughter didn't matter too much to the story.
Anyway, we saw that Nina was very calm, desensitized to the abuse she was seeing everywhere. So it seemed that she was probably being abused for a long time.
When Joe first saved Nina, Nina kissed him, probably thinking that she had to do that to thank him for saving him. Luckily, Joe refused very fast, and instead took care of her like a normal adult should take care of a child.
When Votto was announced dead, Nina didn't really have a reaction. Joe was really worried on her behalf, telling her not to look, but her lack of response could be for a number of reasons. Maybe she was still in a catatonic state, and wasn't registering the words. Maybe she had long stopped caring for her father, because he had pimped her out and hurt her. Or maybe he really was another John. As Nina was taken away by the police, she shouted for Joe, showing that she trusted him.
At Williams' house, we saw Williams' neck was slashed, and Nina was later found with a knife. I'm not sure how the other security guards were killed, but I think it's easy to tell that Nina had killed Williams. He was found in a room that was made up for children, with pink walls and stuffed toys. Nina herself was found in the dining room. Interestingly enough, it was Nina who was comforting Joe rather than the other way around.
I think that Joe's caring nature inspired Nina. I think him caring for her and refusing her sexual advances reminded her that she was worth more than what she could provide sexually. I think Joe inspired her to be strong, and she later expressed this to Joe, indirectly, but no less effectively.
I thought Nina's character was quite interesting. She's a child, and thought simply, but the abuse and trauma of course warped her mind a bit, so she was kind of used to sex and violence. She also remained a bit mysterious to me, but I never thought of her as cunning. At times during the movie, I had wondered if Nina was maybe a Bad Evil Child, but when observing Nina, I felt that she was doing what was reasonable for someone in her position. Also, nice acting by Ekaterina Samsonov.
Votto
Votto was Nina's dad. He was Joe's client, who wanted his daughter back, and wanted Joe to hurt the people who hurt his daughter.
I thought it was a little strange that Votto had gotten an address from an anonymous number. How did he know that it was where Nina was? There was just so much unanswered here that I felt was too convenient that he had all of the right information, but just wasn't able to act on it himself.
I think it was reasonable to believe that Votto had been exposing Nina to abuse, and that he was using her as a pawn in his politics, to get Williams in his pocket, and later to bring him down.
I totally missed that his wife, Nina's mother, had committed suicide, and it made me feel even more sick about Votto as a person.
According to the news report, he had apparently committed suicide. It did feel weird to me at first. If he was so intent on getting his daughter back, why would he turn around and commit suicide? I think it's reasonable to believe that he "got suicided" by Williams as retaliation for trying to get at him through Nina.
In any case, Votto was a scumbag.
Williams
Ah yes, another scumbag. One of the men who attacked Joe's mother revealed to him that Williams was behind the hits on Joe's family and acquaintances, basically everybody he had ever known, including all of those even remotely involved in the hitman operation, including the boy who stocked items at the supermarket :S
Williams lived in a very secluded home that Joe snuck into. At his house, we saw that he had a room that was made up to be a child's room, all pink and sparkly and cute. He had many photos of young girls, and a dollhouse. So it's clear that this was not a new thing to him. He had always abused underage girls, revelled in the fact that he was raping children. It's so sick.
We never really saw much of him on screen as he was already dead by the time Joe had gotten to him. Considering how neat the bed was, I think Nina killed him before he made a move on her. Good.
Themes
Violence
As mentioned, I thought it was worth noting that Joe was very sensitive to violence against women and children, and yet his job relied on violence. That being said, I don't think Joe was violence for violence's sake. I think he did what he could to get the job done, but he would not unnecessarily torture someone.
Joe's form of violence did reflect on his past. He preferred using hammers, and I think it was implied that as a child, his father had hurt his mother or him with a hammer.
Otherwise, I don't think Joe was a lover of violence. As mentioned, I didn't think he had ever thought to get revenge for his mother, because violence would not bring his mother back.
I also don't think Joe wanted to continue his job of violence. Unfortunately I think he had pigeonholed himself because he was a soldier, and so his skills were limited. But by the end of the movie, I think he saw hope, and perhaps with Nina's support, he could start a new life without violence.
Protection
Joe has a tricky relationship with protection and self-preservation. As a child, he would hide in the closet as his parents fought, and he would hide under the bed with his mother when his father was particularly violent. I think he associated the feeling of being suffocated with being safe, because in the closet, he would be safe from the fighting.
But througohut his life, Joe was unable to protect others. From his father, he was always hiding or being protected by his mother. As a soldier, he had tried to give food to a child, only for the child to be killed by another child for that food. He felt so useless, and I think him being a hitman was him hoping that he would be able to use his skillset to finally protect someone.
That was why he felt so useless when he saw that Nina had protected herself without his help. But as I said, Nina implied that she did need him, and it reminded Joe that just as Nina was far more than a sexual object, Joe was far more than a weapon. He could protect in other ways.
Abuse
I think Joe bonded with Nina as they were both survivors of childhood abuse. For Joe it was physical abuse, and for Nina it was sexual abuse. I think he understood what Nina was feeling, and that was how he was able to convince her that he was not trying to get something from her, he just felt that children should be protected and taken care of, and he would help her do that if there was no one else to do that for her.
Overall
This movie definitely took me by surprise. The story itself was rather simple, and I think how it was told left an impression. It was a little softer than I would have expected from such violent topics, and I appreciated that. As well, the hopeful tone was a very nice way to end it.
I would put a trigger warning on this movie for violence and implied child sexual abuse. I felt that the movie did its best to pan away, or show such violence off screen, but the effects of such harm were no less stark. Otherwise, I quite liked this movie.
Spoilers.
Story
Joe was a hitman. The beginning of the movie introduced us to him. We saw that he did not shy away from violence, and that he had a caring relationship with his mother.
Joe was given a job to rescue the teenage daughter of a politican, Nina Votto, who was supposedly at a brothel. Joe rescued her, but she was promptly kidnapped by some people in police uniforms.
Afterwards, Joe's friends and acquaintances were being killed one by one by these so-called authorities, including the mother he loved so much. We learned that the politician's rival, Williams, was behind this, and that he had wanted Nina for himself.
After burying his mother, Joe tracked down Williams and found all the security personnel dead, and Williams dead. It was implied that Nina had killed him herself.
Joe and Nina then took off, free to go anywhere they wanted. Joe briefly had a thought about committing suicide, but we saw that it was actually just a thought.
During the movie, I wondered: Who was it who was never really there? Was it Joe, or was it Nina? When Joe went to find Nina at Williams' home, and saw that Williams was dead, he called himself weak, because he was unable to save Nina. Later, we saw that Nina had killed Williams herself. So I think Joe thought himself weak, that Nina had never really needed him, and that was why he had considered suicide.
On the flip side, I sometimes wondered whether Nina was just an apparition, a hallucination that Joe had thought up of, who would help him get out of this assassination business. We never saw Nina interact with Votto or Williams on screen, so can we be sure that the Nina that Joe saw was actually Nina Votto? A possibility was that Joe couldn't find Nina at the brothel, but Williams was alerted to his presence and that was why his friends and acquaintances were being hunted down. Then, later, Joe also failed to find Nina at Williams' house, but that was his opportunity to start his life fresh. Another possibility was that Joe had saved another girl, but she still gave Joe the strength to leave. I think it's still most likely that the girl that Joe saved was Nina, but I thought it was an interesting thought to pursue.
I really enjoyed how this story wrote Joe's character. He had past trauma, but none of it was explained or sensationalized or romanticized. They just made up who he was, and influenced how he thought. He often thought of hiding in the closet wrapped in plastic while his parents fought, which was why he found comfort in suffocating. That wasn't something that made him "weird," or affected how he operated in his day-to-day life, it just was.
The actual dialogue and writing in this movie was actually quite minimalistic, but it worked well with the direction style.
Production
The directing was BEAUTIFUL. I looked up the director, Lynne Ramsay, and out of her other films, I've only seen We Need to Talk About Kevin, but I watched it many years ago on a plane, so I may need to rewatch it when my mind is less fuzzy lol.
I really liked how Ramsay approached the portrayal of Joe's character, how we saw his thoughts flit in and out of his mind. Nothing was overexplained, because when it is, we may intellectualize the character too much, which is sometimes good, but in the case of Joe, I think he wants really hard to show that he's learned to control his trauma. Of course, he has hangups, that's expected, but he doesn't let it dictate his moral compass, and I think the direction style really propped that up.
The visual aesthetics of the movie were great too. The atmosphere of this movie was very distinct. It was quiet and gave us a lot of time to stew in Joe's thoughts, or to appreciate the frame.
I think I was rather neutral about Joaquin Phoenix before this movie, but this movie did make me like him more. I think he played the character of Joe trying to be normal very well.
Characters
Joe
Joe was The main character of the movie. This movie was very much his journey, maybe even more than it was a thriller.
As we know, he underwent much trauma, including having an abusive father, as well as serving in the military and seeing violence among children. As an adult, Joe was very sensitive to violence against women and children.
I think Joe became a hitman because he had a limited skillset as a former soldier. The way that he acted on his missions was extremely matter-of-fact. I thought it was interesting that Joe was so sensitive to violence against women and children, but he did not hesitate to be violent to the people he was assigned to kill or security personnel that got in his way. Maybe he saw men differently from women and children. That being said, when he accosted the errand boy for the brothel, I did think he was a little gentler with him than he would have been with, say, a security guard.
My guess is that Joe wants to be kind wherever possible. He's not the most emotionally adept guy, like when he was asked to take a picture for the young women on the street, but I think he wants to be nice. And I think he wants to protect these innocent things in life, like love and friendship and happiness, and he uses his skillset to do that, by being violent against those who are evil.
As mentioned, Joe seemed to struggle with feeling "useless." Before, Joe's mother gave him the strength to keep going. We saw that they had a terrific relationship. Like all old ladies, she had some instances of dementia, some bad habits, etc. but they loved each other a lot. So when she was killed, I really felt sorrow for Joe. They'd been through so much.
Joe felt so useless that he had let the police take Nina away to Williams, and he felt useless that Nina had to fight herself at Williams' house. When Nina went away at the diner, Joe contemplated killing himself, and in his mind, he felt that nobody would notice or care. But Nina came back, told him to wake up, and that it was time to go, because it was a beautiful day. I think Nina gave him strength, and told him that what he had done was not for nothing. He had also given her courage, by being there for her, and that counts for something too. And I think Joe realizes that caring for someone doesn't only mean providing for them and protecting them, being there for them emotionally is very important too.
I'm so pleased that Joe had his happy ending. He deserves it ;_;
Mother
Joe and his mother had a very close relationship. When Joe's mother mentioned that she had watched Psycho, I wondered if she was a figment of Joe's imagination. Maybe she was someone who was never really there. After all, we never saw her interact with anybody other than Joe. Perhaps she was a representation of something that the assassins had killed, and that by burying her, Joe was forced to come to terms with moving on in his life.
In any case, I never once thought Joe's mother to be someone weighing him down. We saw that he was a happier person with her. They had helped each other through terrible times.
I also never felt that Joe had wanted to get revenge for his mother, probably because he know that violence is only an answer when protecting or helping someone, and revenge is not going to get his mother back.
The scene where Joe buried his mother was very touching, and even after burying her, I felt that his mother always gave him strength.
Nina
Nina was Votto's teenage daughter who'd been kidnapped. I'm not really sure how Votto got the address of the brothel. My impression was that Votto had been pimping Nina out, and he was putting Joe onto the brothel in order to bring him down. I read a Reddit thread here that theorized that Votto wasn't her father, but just another jealous John. Some of the commenters mentioned that Nina's mother had committed suicide, maybe because she knew about the abuse, but otherwise, whether or not Nina was really Votto's daughter didn't matter too much to the story.
Anyway, we saw that Nina was very calm, desensitized to the abuse she was seeing everywhere. So it seemed that she was probably being abused for a long time.
When Joe first saved Nina, Nina kissed him, probably thinking that she had to do that to thank him for saving him. Luckily, Joe refused very fast, and instead took care of her like a normal adult should take care of a child.
When Votto was announced dead, Nina didn't really have a reaction. Joe was really worried on her behalf, telling her not to look, but her lack of response could be for a number of reasons. Maybe she was still in a catatonic state, and wasn't registering the words. Maybe she had long stopped caring for her father, because he had pimped her out and hurt her. Or maybe he really was another John. As Nina was taken away by the police, she shouted for Joe, showing that she trusted him.
At Williams' house, we saw Williams' neck was slashed, and Nina was later found with a knife. I'm not sure how the other security guards were killed, but I think it's easy to tell that Nina had killed Williams. He was found in a room that was made up for children, with pink walls and stuffed toys. Nina herself was found in the dining room. Interestingly enough, it was Nina who was comforting Joe rather than the other way around.
I think that Joe's caring nature inspired Nina. I think him caring for her and refusing her sexual advances reminded her that she was worth more than what she could provide sexually. I think Joe inspired her to be strong, and she later expressed this to Joe, indirectly, but no less effectively.
I thought Nina's character was quite interesting. She's a child, and thought simply, but the abuse and trauma of course warped her mind a bit, so she was kind of used to sex and violence. She also remained a bit mysterious to me, but I never thought of her as cunning. At times during the movie, I had wondered if Nina was maybe a Bad Evil Child, but when observing Nina, I felt that she was doing what was reasonable for someone in her position. Also, nice acting by Ekaterina Samsonov.
Votto
Votto was Nina's dad. He was Joe's client, who wanted his daughter back, and wanted Joe to hurt the people who hurt his daughter.
I thought it was a little strange that Votto had gotten an address from an anonymous number. How did he know that it was where Nina was? There was just so much unanswered here that I felt was too convenient that he had all of the right information, but just wasn't able to act on it himself.
I think it was reasonable to believe that Votto had been exposing Nina to abuse, and that he was using her as a pawn in his politics, to get Williams in his pocket, and later to bring him down.
I totally missed that his wife, Nina's mother, had committed suicide, and it made me feel even more sick about Votto as a person.
According to the news report, he had apparently committed suicide. It did feel weird to me at first. If he was so intent on getting his daughter back, why would he turn around and commit suicide? I think it's reasonable to believe that he "got suicided" by Williams as retaliation for trying to get at him through Nina.
In any case, Votto was a scumbag.
Williams
Ah yes, another scumbag. One of the men who attacked Joe's mother revealed to him that Williams was behind the hits on Joe's family and acquaintances, basically everybody he had ever known, including all of those even remotely involved in the hitman operation, including the boy who stocked items at the supermarket :S
Williams lived in a very secluded home that Joe snuck into. At his house, we saw that he had a room that was made up to be a child's room, all pink and sparkly and cute. He had many photos of young girls, and a dollhouse. So it's clear that this was not a new thing to him. He had always abused underage girls, revelled in the fact that he was raping children. It's so sick.
We never really saw much of him on screen as he was already dead by the time Joe had gotten to him. Considering how neat the bed was, I think Nina killed him before he made a move on her. Good.
Themes
Violence
As mentioned, I thought it was worth noting that Joe was very sensitive to violence against women and children, and yet his job relied on violence. That being said, I don't think Joe was violence for violence's sake. I think he did what he could to get the job done, but he would not unnecessarily torture someone.
Joe's form of violence did reflect on his past. He preferred using hammers, and I think it was implied that as a child, his father had hurt his mother or him with a hammer.
Otherwise, I don't think Joe was a lover of violence. As mentioned, I didn't think he had ever thought to get revenge for his mother, because violence would not bring his mother back.
I also don't think Joe wanted to continue his job of violence. Unfortunately I think he had pigeonholed himself because he was a soldier, and so his skills were limited. But by the end of the movie, I think he saw hope, and perhaps with Nina's support, he could start a new life without violence.
Protection
Joe has a tricky relationship with protection and self-preservation. As a child, he would hide in the closet as his parents fought, and he would hide under the bed with his mother when his father was particularly violent. I think he associated the feeling of being suffocated with being safe, because in the closet, he would be safe from the fighting.
But througohut his life, Joe was unable to protect others. From his father, he was always hiding or being protected by his mother. As a soldier, he had tried to give food to a child, only for the child to be killed by another child for that food. He felt so useless, and I think him being a hitman was him hoping that he would be able to use his skillset to finally protect someone.
That was why he felt so useless when he saw that Nina had protected herself without his help. But as I said, Nina implied that she did need him, and it reminded Joe that just as Nina was far more than a sexual object, Joe was far more than a weapon. He could protect in other ways.
Abuse
I think Joe bonded with Nina as they were both survivors of childhood abuse. For Joe it was physical abuse, and for Nina it was sexual abuse. I think he understood what Nina was feeling, and that was how he was able to convince her that he was not trying to get something from her, he just felt that children should be protected and taken care of, and he would help her do that if there was no one else to do that for her.
Overall
This movie definitely took me by surprise. The story itself was rather simple, and I think how it was told left an impression. It was a little softer than I would have expected from such violent topics, and I appreciated that. As well, the hopeful tone was a very nice way to end it.