YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

Joaquin Phoenix ('Her', ‘Walk the Line’) is Joe. He has PTSD on top of PTSD on top of PTSD. He spends his days taking care of his elderly mother (Judith Roberts, TV’s ‘Orange is the New Black’) and his nights as a “hired gun” for those willing to pay. The only thing crossing over into both worlds is his inability to block out the trauma of the things he’s seen and done in his life, and his constant half-baked suicides attempts to forget them permanently. When tasked with recovering a politician’s young daughter (Ekaterina Samsonov, ‘Wonderstruck’) from a house of unspeakable evil, he ends up pissing off the wrong people and they make it personal. Let’s just say that whatever happens next, they brought it on themselves, and no one will weep for their outcome.

So, we have our story, our plot and our protagonist, and to put it all together is Ramsay’s exquisite direction. She has compartmentalised every single facet of this film and Joe’s personality. For a film that contains so much violence, she has created a distinction between violence with a purpose, vengeful violence, self-inflicted violence, and cathartic violence. She has created a distinction between day Joe and night Joe. She has created a distinction between what Joe hears then, now and later. This is a puzzle with a thousand pieces, pieced together with precision, grace and an unparalleled eye by Lynne Ramsay. I also don’t think I’ve ever given kudos to a sound designer before, but all hail Paul Davies and his team for their extraordinary work. As for the small cast, Joaquin is quiet, soulful and damaged, a character he has perfected over time. He has embodied Joe from his excessive physical damage to his mental scaring and his uncompromising heart.

‘You Were Never Really Here’ is a slow burn with a lot of brutal elements with smatterings of ‘Leon: The Professional’ - only that film now seems like a Disney flick compared to this.