You Were Never Really Here

Quick Impressions:
Okay, Jonny Greenwood needs to win an Academy Award. I don’t claim any specialized knowledge or sophisticated taste when it comes to music, but the score of this film is so amazing. I just love it.

“And keep in mind, he just did the score for Phantom Thread,” I tried to rave to my husband as the end credits ran, only I momentarily blanked and couldn’t remember the name of the Paul Thomas Anderson film I meant. I mean I’d just watched Joaquin Phoenix have a breakdown, and now there were milkshakes all over the place. It was all very confusing.

But after a lot of agonizing and a quick game of charades, he finally figured out what I was talking about and agreed that Greenwood’s versatility made his achievement here doubly astonishing.

My husband loved the score, too. In fact, he said he probably would have enjoyed the experience more if it had been a concert accompanied by a blank screen. (He was not a huge fan of the movie.) He also had the amazing epiphany, “That should have been the score of the new Blade Runner,” and I was like, “Yeeeeeeessss!” (He’s such a genius. It’s too bad we’re not in charge of everything. You’d love our reality. I promise!)

Anyway, I was excited to see You Were Never Really Here for a couple of reasons. 1) I keep vaguely hearing that “everyone” is raving about it (probably on Facebook which is always a reliable source), and 2) I absolutely loved director Lynne Ramsay’s previous film We Need to Talk About Kevin. (For some reason, that film has really stuck with me, probably because Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller are so amazing, and who doesn’t love a good sociopath?)

Now I’m not as much of a fan of Joaquin Phoenix, but a few years ago, I realized that I’ve been kind of blaming him for not being his late brother, which is the most illogical and unfair thing I’ve ever heard of, so I’m trying to be better. I will acknowledge that Joaquin is a very talented actor, and I mean, I don’t dislike him. I just wouldn’t see a movie because of him. Most of his stuff is way too intense for me. (I actually joked to my husband after the film that Joaquin Phoenix probably has PTSD just from being Joaquin Phoenix. I’m not commenting on his life. I just mean, think of all those intense roles he’s played over the course of his career! I get stressed out just watching those performances, and he’s been living them!)

The Good:
I liked the film. My husband did not. In fact, as we discussed our impressions afterward, I learned that we had been watching two different movies, even though we’d been sitting right next to each other, staring at the same screen.

I loved listening to my husband’s take on the film, though. Every time he talked about the end of the movie, his comments featured more profanity and more milkshakes, until finally the whole discussion devolved into a bunch of *&#$!ing milkshakes, not unlike the film itself.  I really thought I would die laughing at his exasperation. (And the milkshake thing drove me crazy, too. I was so hoping the final shot of the table would help me confirm that my reading of the movie was accurate. But there were like forty-seven thousand milkshakes on that table! Milkshakes of every flavor! What exactly are we supposed to be able to discern from that?)

This film definitely leaves a lot open to interpretation, and my husband and I went two different ways from the start. Back in the car, he explained his take on the story first, and I was slightly surprised that he hadn’t even considered my interpretation of events. I’m not sure why I latched onto this reading so early. I just got it into my head to view the story a certain way about five minutes in, and then I watched the whole thing assuming I was right and seeing everything as evidence making my case.

The moment when I felt positive that I was right came when a certain key event happened midway through. I asked myself, “Who would benefit from this?” and every possible answer seemed so convoluted and unlikely that I decided, “That’s got to be the wrong question.”

So then I asked, “Who would be hurt by this?” The only answer was immediately obvious, and, as far as I was concerned, there was the story.

My husband’s way, the story is incredibly complex and very unusual. You have to pay close attention, and you still may get a little lost. The ending is annoyingly unsatisfying. Nothing is resolved.

My way, the story is incredibly simple and surely very familiar to people in certain professions. You don’t have to pay as much attention to the details as you do in my husband’s version because it’s a lot easier to figure out what is happening and who did what and why. The ending doesn’t absolutely confirm this reading, but it certainly doesn’t contradict it. The movie is way more satisfying my way. But then again, my husband’s way, it’s not satisfying at all. So it’s kind of a hollow victory for my narrative.

Now I’m not absolutely sure that I have everything right. Start to finish, I can tell a complete and satisfying story incorporating all major elements that we see on screen, and it sounds about right to me. But, honestly, I could be wrong.

Except about that key event that happens midway through. Unfortunately I am positive I am right about that. It’s the one event I’m sure of in the movie, and I really think the film goes out of its way to support this narrative, especially in light of the references to a classic film early in the movie. These come in one of only a handful of actual, intelligible conversations, and there’s no way the director would let Phoenix’s character spend so long talking about this other, classic film if it weren’t thematically significant. Sadly, I am sure mention of this other movie is foreshadowing.

I think my reading of the events is pretty clever. It incorporates and makes sense of so many things.

But as I said, I’m not absolutely certain that I’m right about everything. The movie makes us do a lot of the work ourselves.  It never gives us easy answers.  From a certain point of view, it never gives us answers at all.

There’s not much else I can say about You Were Never Really Here while keeping the review spoiler free.

Well, I can say that not only is the score amazing, but the film’s use of sound overall is spectacular. Every little noise counts in this film. I kept remembering Tilda Swinton persistently eating those crunchy scrambled eggs (and shells) in We Need to Talk About Kevin. You Were Never Really Here’s soundtrack is quite good, too. No aural element is wasted.

Best Scene:
Joe mumbles so much in this movie. One (among legion) of my husband’s great frustrations is that he could never understand what Joe was actually saying.

So I really like Joe’s conversations with his mother, especially the scene in which he sings with her.  Their relationship is the one thing that makes perfect sense in the movie.  It’s a touchstone for both Joe and the audience.  We know exactly how the relationship works and why it matters so much to Joe.

Best Action Sequence:
I liked the opening sequence with the plastic bag. It brought back vivid memories of being nineteen and attempting to smother myself in a garbage bag in the below-stairs crawl space of my parents’ new house. I wanted to die because I thought, “Even if I don’t feel this way forever, these feelings will always come back. I will continue to be broken and dysfunctional like this again and again for the rest of my life because this condition is not curable. If I ever feel good, that will abruptly end. If I ever feel too good, that will be even worse.” The garbage bags smelled like vanilla. I began to notice that I got an endorphin rush when I took the bag off and finally let myself breathe again. After a while, I decided that meant I didn’t want to commit suicide and was just wasting time, so I quit doing it.

I think these recollections put me in the proper frame of mind to appreciate this movie.

Of course, as the film went on, I began to appreciate that Joe’s relationship to the plastic bag ritual was far more complicated than I had initially realized.

Best Scene Visually:
That scene in the pond is so uncanny because it looks so much like the end of The Shape of Water, yet surely no similarity is intended. The visual symbolism here is so interesting. (I realize these statements are beyond vague, but specificity seems spoilery.)

I also thought that the film gave us a number of visual clues about what was going on, but if I call out any of them, I will likely spoil the movie, too.  I’m just talking about little things, the body language of a character, the set up of an office, faces in a crowd, the appearance of spattering blood.  Other stuff, too, but I don’t want to go into detail and give too much away.

The Negatives:
If you are looking for a traditional thriller, please, look further.

If you watch this movie hoping for a conventional popcorn flick about a tough guy hunting down bad guys and rescuing a girl (like Liam Neeson in Taken), you will leave wanting revenge on the filmmakers. This is more like Liam Neeson in…No, you know what, Liam Neeson’s movies are all more traditionally entertaining than You Were Never Really Here.