Only God Forgives - Written and Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (Contains Spoilers)
So I went to the cinema. This film cast such a spell on me that I had to see it two times in a row, on the same exact day which was today. I only waited two hours before I went back, still being in a deep cloud of meditative emotions associated with the experience this film has given me. (I wanted to see it again right away, and it was also very helpful, by the second time I connected many more dots I didn’t get the first time.) If I had to describe it, I would say that in the majority of the running time the viewer spends his/her time in the all-consuming and existentially deep womb of a mother dragon who feasts on her own children. This film works it’s magic in an almost untraceable way. It stunned me so subtly but still deeply that I only noticed it’s impact when it was over, and I had to leave the theater. Despite all the graphic violence, the highly stylized visuals and the brooding and pounding score, Only God Forgives is very minimalistic and subtle in the dramaturgical and subtextual sense, making this Nicolas Winding Refn’s most powerful, confident and actually the most thoughtfully and even-handedly directed film up to this point. The cinematography while being very impressionistic and stylish, is actually very static, and less fluid than in the case of Drive, where you could still see Refn reaching for an impact on the audience, but still reaching it, and rightfully so. Here the direction is less noticable, because you are already plunged neck-deep into this nightmarish atmosphere and it’s meditative pace right from the start, but only if you give it a chance to mutedly dazzle you with it’s simmering power. The suspense is not as strong here as in Drive, but still works very well, once again the use of silence and slowmotion to create tension and to build up the exploding violence is very effective, but here their use is less about action, and more about creating a brooding atmosphere and state of mind (therefore more “artsy”). Refn used the flash-forward editing technique in Drive to great effect, but the editing this time is much more complicated and in the style of stream-of-consciousness, obviously evoking Jodorowsky’s montage technique, with which he’s establishing metaphysical layers, creating a time and a place that is arbitrary, where we move without limits, see everything in the present moment, wherever we are, because the characters can be anywhere at any time, without the constraints of realistic establishing of time and place. This is a fairytale dreamworld. The characters move very slowly and are all in a deep trance-state, constantly observing the world and everything that’s in it, looking for meaning, which encourages the viewer to move through the film in the same existentialistic state of mind, listen to the evocative score for cues(Another fantastic work by Cliff Martinez), look for meaning in everything, embrace visual thinking, and by that interpret non-verbal interactions and symbolic images. (At least that’s what happened to me, but I generally see the world in this manner) Once again, the editing works in misteryous ways. There are lots of occasions where images from three different scenes get intertwined, creating metaphysical connections and hidden meanings as I read the faces of the actors in the context given by the dialogue and the mixture of the shown events. I’m not gonna lie to you, and I don’t want to sound high-minded and pretentious but probably I already do…You have to know at least a bit of Freudian psichology and Lacanian psychoanalitic film theory to truly get the hidden meanings in this film, and therefore, the whole film itself.
Julian is an obvious example of a wounded and tormented little boy in the body of a seemingly strong adult man, who is deeply stuck in the oedipal phase thanks to his mother, Crystal, and is in the deluded, confused, sexually repressed and frustrated state associated with it. He narcistically poses as a tough macho-man, to hide his emotional scars and weaknesses, playing an action hero in his own infantile dreamworld. Ryan Gosling gives a brilliant performance. He communicates Julian’s repressed rage, sexual frustration, and even emotions that could be tender but remain unexpressed by the character with subtle facial expressions and a muted and sligtly trembling voice. He communicates what Julian is trying to hide in a smoldering and deeply felt way. Less is much more. The way these emotions erupt after having kept a lid on them is also spot-on. When he shouts at Mai “Take it off!” it’s a totally unexpected and crazy reaction, mounting rage finding it’s expression after being repressed. He could never show anger towards his tyrannical mother, instead he takes his frustration out on his payed prostitute, to whom he’s strangely connected in an emotional way, suggesting a sensitive side to the character. Maybe Julian could’ve been a good guy. He clearly copied his father in his oedipal stage, killed him with the actual tools he copied from him without even realizing it. The boy at first fights his father with the exact same things he learned from him, in a sense fighting himself, or his own animus which is the mirror of the image of the father. Julian has a severe case of castration anxiety. This is why Chang shows up in an early vision without them having even met, when Julian is watching Mai masturbate. He’s frightened of being mutilated as a punishment for his sexual actions by a higher father figure, who can even be God(Think of the sexual repression of the Christians!). His hands are the symbolical substitute for his penis, they get cut off in this frightening dream, where he’s trying to reach something unknown, some higher state-of-consciousness, that is frightening and exciting. Sex. His hands reach into the darkness, that is deep and all-absorbing, like a womb, and especially like a vagina. By the end of the film after his fight with Chang, where he’s severely but still mercifully beaten and bruised to pulp by him, he chooses to change his fate. He accepts his punishment, and he’s liberated from the chains of his mother’s womb, as his hands are cut off. Before that he reaches with his hands into his mother’s corpse, cutting a hole into her belly, touching her womb where he once occupied his perfect, loving, and fulfilled place. By accepting his punishment, he accepts that this perfect existence can never come back, hence, he accepts the possibility of real adulthood. Refn here evokes Robert Bresson’s prison metaphor where the protagonist can only get out of his/her existential prison either through suicide(the body itself being the prison of the soul), or by choosing some kind of other prison, either physical or metaphysical. Julian loses his hands, but finds his faith, something/someone to believe in, and that is God on Earth, Chang himself.
Vithaya Pansigram powerfully embodies this mostly vengeful, but sometimes gentle God. His calm but suffocatingly heavy presence suggests someone who can see inside the souls of others, someone who can read minds, knowing what their moves will be even before they do. He seems to know and feel everything and everyone around him to their inner most being. Nothing escapes him. Kristin Scott-Thomas plays Crystal, the mafia-matriarch who quite possibly sexually abused her sons. At first her evilness and vulgarness felt a bit out-of-place and comical to me, but then I realized that Refn’s epic and mythical vision of the Bangkok underworld cannot warrant anything less than that. KST in a few scenes nicely peels a few layers, she’s agressive, trashy, vulgar, tyrannical, manipulative, strangely sexy, almost beautiful, vulnerable and sentimental(narcisistically so, as she only notices her own emotions and she also puts them out there to the world to see, she demands everyone to be her audience). In this epic world, only epic masculinity is true masculinity(I stole this bit from someone else, can’t remember). Julian aspires to this, and falls short, rightfully so. When he fights Chang, Refn shows us images of a thailandian idol, whom Julian tryes to resemble as he’s looking at his clenched fists (this is basically an act of masturbation). When he’s beaten to utter crap, his tough guy mask, his facade is destroyed, he’s no longer deluding himself with these narcissistic visions. He accepts his vulnerability, his inherent human weakness, his imperfection through mutilation and in reward he finds his faith and his redemption. I hope he becomes a real man someday.
After the amazing semi-mainstream Drive, Only God Forgives is Nicolas Winding Refn’s other, more arthouse masterpiece. For me, this is a new favourite. 94%
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