With the recent flawed depictions of mental health within film and television, ranging from 13 Reasons Why to Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn, it’s rare for there to be a genuine reflection on psychological trauma. Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, a tale of a hitman trying to overcome his suicidal thoughts, deviates from the status quo with its visceral approach to such subject matter. Utilising the acting prowess of Joaquin Phoenix as Joe, a loner living with his mother who he also takes care of (a role for which he won Best Actor at Cannes), Ramsay takes us on a journey that, despite seeming extreme in its depiction creates an atmosphere necessary to examine the paralleled qualities of a corrupted world with the tortured mind of a FBI veteran.
We begin the experience by observing what appears to be a man about to be killed with a bag on his head, sucking away his potential to live with each breath in and out. Accompanied by this is a little girl’s voice counting down from forty, as slowly and agonisingly the bag tightens around his face, constricting his lungs.
We wait.
We hope it will end soon.
It does, but not from him dying, rather from the realisation that he was trying to kill himself. This first couple of minutes anticipate the film’s plot and tone. Ramsay approaches the subject matter, directing from her own screenplay based on the novel by Jonathan Ames, in a similar way that Gaspar Noé did with Climax — creating circumstances and images that raise the hair on the back of your neck, based on their brutality and realism.
As if this wasn’t dark enough to endure, Ramsay continues by sending Joe, who is already down on his luck, into a downward spiral that he hardly escapes. In doing so she takes a holistic approach to his mental health. Punctuated by short, ten-second-long snapshots of Joe’s past, Ramsay approaches the concept of “show don’t tell” with a gusto that blows previous attempts, such as Rambo: First Blood, out of the water. All of this is done with the visual aesthetics Ramsay used in her previous We Need to Talk About Kevin, yet she delineates the approach here by creating a far more realistic — and ironically far more sinister — portrayal of a man with nothing.
We Need to Talk About Kevin composer Jonny Greenwood reunites with Ramsay to offer music that fluctuates in its intensity, using Greenwood’s distinct out of rhythm style of composition. The score creates a certain uneasiness that doesn’t come from how eerie it is, but rather the fact that it lacks a continuous rhythm; just as you’re ready for the next repetition, it never comes.
Ramsay takes her story and extends it, stretches it and pulls it out to the point where it seems unbearable, such as the loss of all of Joe’s friends and colleagues and his response to it. She takes concepts that may be taboo, but unlike other provocateurs and rather more like Noé, approaches them with a certain amount of finesse, favouring metaphor over a series of events. Yes, stuff does happen, people are killed, and we are exposed to the destructive potentials of humanity. Yet instead of being invested in Joe’s ability to kill all his enemies, as in Jack Reacher, The Equaliser or any of the other high-death hitman films, Ramsay positions us to care more about his ability to escape his nightmare. The film’s final sequence leaves us guessing, and that’s how it should be, leaving us in reflection after the closed ending. There are bad guys, but they never seem to be as bad as the things that we don’t physically see. Ramsay exhibits how this trauma can underlie the violence so often glorified; taking a common film trope and dissecting it exposing its flaws and fixing it with her auteurial style.
Suicide and depression shouldn’t be played around with. Depicted in the right way, however, they can form an experience that leaves you not only sympathetic to the condition but help you reflect on your own life. Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here takes a dark concept and pushes you through it; as a result, this film is not for everyone. However, it delivers one of the best performances, some of the best direction and sound design of any film (after Climax) I have seen this year, fully immersing you in the world that Ramsay creates. In making us understand the pain of one man, Ramsay may have also allowed her audience to better interpret the pain they go through themselves.
Written by David (18) edited by Luke Goodsell (as part of the Film in Revolt writing mentorship program).