Only God Forgives (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013)

[Iamhere]

I was always taught (and I agree) that we are not to look at intentions of artists while looking at art, but what it ends up doing regardless. However it could be argued that this is then a cinematic character that he developed in order to make sense as a silent one (but maybe that's trying too hard).

[matrixschmatrix]

I think, for me, that the thing that makes this not a great movie isn't that any particular part of it is weak, it's that as a whole it doesn't seem to add up to much- and honestly, a lot of the praise seems to be an attempt to push a reading on to a blank page, creating a richness in a movie that's ultimately fairly shallow. Which is fine, really, but I don't find it especially compelling.

The idea that silence is cinematic certainly isn't a Refn original- I think I read Rosenbaum talking about Man of the West, and saying how Gary Cooper was one of the most cinematic of American actors in part because he acted and spoke so minimally in a lot of his most iconic roles (though clearly he wasn't thinking of Design for Living when he said that.)

[FakeBonanza]

I think, for me, that the thing that makes this not a great movie isn't that any particular part of it is weak, it's that as a whole it doesn't seem to add up to much- and honestly, a lot of the praise seems to be an attempt to push a reading on to a blank page, creating a richness in a movie that's ultimately fairly shallow. Which is fine, really, but I don't find it especially compelling.

As a viewer I tend to favour visual content a little more than narrative content, and as it is a very visually rich film, I can forgive it, to some extent, for its narrative and thematic faults (though I still didn't love it). I think I would agree that it, in a sense, doesn't add up to much, but I'm not sure if that is because it's a blank page. I feel like it struggles for the opposite reason, as Winding Refn liberally volleys around thematic elements without committing to any of them, and certainly without pursuing them to any satisfying end. There are varying elements that fall into general categories of violence, sex, religion, etc, but the film scatters these elements on the page with no intellectual goal in sight. In fact, these elements are sometimes even in conflict with one another.

Whichever the perspective, the result is ultimately the same. Actually, because thematic elements are scattered everywhere, it could be said that there are a number of blank pages within the work, as many of the most effective images, from an aesthetic standpoint, do not provide any apparent thematic contribution (the various beautifully lit, precisely composed hallways, for example).

[criterion10]

I think, for me, that the thing that makes this not a great movie isn't that any particular part of it is weak, it's that as a whole it doesn't seem to add up to much

This is pretty much exactly how I felt. On the surface (the visuals, the score, etc.), the film is stunning. Though there isn't much beneath that, and so while the film is incredibly atmospheric and there are interesting moments, the sum of those moments adds up to very little.

[Iamhere]

As far a julian being a blank slate. Gosling stated in an interview that he was the vehicle and the audience is the driver.

This goes off of what orson welles had said about needing to have a conversation with the audience. It keeps the audience working with the film and therefore keeping their interest...maybe it didn't keep your interest because you were getting upset, that's a fair judgment i suppose.

I think the mixture of sex and violence does add up to something, the effects of julians awful youthful background and also the confusion of entertainment. Sex and violence as entertainment which comes full circle during the torture scene at a karaoke bar. It doesn't relate to the religious or philosophy plot but it does add to the elements of sin and being confused on what is right or wrong.

[domino harvey]

Okay, so what would the difference between a blank slate protagonist left undefined due to larger artistic reasons and an underwritten main character look like in terms of this film? Because every defense offered seems to disregard the obvious here

[Iamhere]

Im going based off the tone and mood or atmosphere of the rest of the film. Refns use of images to tell a story while all other characters seem to be placed to push different ideas onto the blank slate seem to support this idea, versus having an un interesting well developed protagonist with other supporting characters who non stop talk and are fleshed out. In this film they all seem to signify something toward the slate.

[warren oates]

Okay, so what would the difference between a blank slate protagonist left undefined due to larger artistic reasons and an underwritten main character look like in terms of this film? Because every defense offered seems to disregard the obvious here

I think it's as wrong-headed for the film's supporters to argue that Gosling's character is an intentional blank -- disregarding the very clear if minimal character information we get about his backstory, relationships and current motivation -- as it is for detractors to imply that the film itself is underwritten because it ought to be more interested in this stuff. As if it would somehow be better to have him making Marlon Brando type speeches where he pours his heart out about his anguished dilemma. You might as well demand the same thing of Melville's Jef Costello, also a minimal/laconic type rather than a cipher, also in a film where more precisely nuanced character revelations are entirely beside the point and, it should go without saying yet seems to need saying here, would be untrue to the character in question.

[Mr Sausage]

Seems to me like Refn/Gosling is taking cues from Takeshi Kitano's screen presence.

[matrixschmatrix]

Somewhat unfair, but germane:

Ask Ryan Gosling's Character in Only God Forgives

[domino harvey]

I am yet to see this but on the basis of Drive which I like a lot, how would any of you compare Gosling's persona in this to his quasi autistic persona in Drive and the remarkable two late sequences of that film in which he dons the stunt mask - a brilliant conceit and endlessly provocatively fascinating - and the final showdown with its completely predictable outcome which is a reduction of the notion of nemesis to two players/sides as one?

Let's put it this way: Compared to his perf in Only God Forgives, Gosling comes off like Montgomery Clift in Drive. I think Gosling had more presence in that film and more range while still being a distant cipher. Here he's a blinking cardboard cutout

And that link is hilarious, Matrix!

[mfunk9786]

My two cents: I think the character is portrayed as largely silent to riff on the idea that behind that silence is a lot of Earth-shaking gravitas and a capability for incredible amounts of score-settling violence, which is almost exactly the trope used in Drive, and which also recalls the ending to the Simpsons episode "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson." I'd write that whole gag out but if you're familiar with it, you'll know the joke I'm talking about.

In Only God Forgives, Refn takes Gosling's character to the point where you think "Oh, here we go." and then shows him getting beaten to a pulp. This guy is not particularly vengeful, or particularly violent. He's keeping his frustration bottled up, and releasing it in the wrong directions at times during the film (often in his own fantasies: even when he blows off proverbial steam it's not in his actual life), but when push ultimately comes to shove, he proves himself to be essentially powerless in the situation he's found himself in, and he doesn't seem to care. He's waiting for the outcome of the film all along. Refn presents a strong, silent image and then chips away at it by making us realize that his inner frustrations don't translate to a thing when he's faced with actual confrontation. It's a big "fuck you" to the audience and the film's reception alone is nearly proof positive that it doesn't work all that well, but Refn is clearly trying to riff on some of the same filmmaking themes he explored in Drive under the hot red lights of a no-win, no-heroes scenario.

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, that was one of my initial impressions- it's a bit like if you extended the bit in Drive where Gosling is giving his normal speech to Standard's handler, and the handler's reaction suddenly makes Gosling look like a deluded jackass, rather than a terrifying movie killer. Here, we get the terrifying movie killer, too, but while some of the conscience of an action anti-hero remains with Gosling (he ultimately makes at least one moral choice, though his reasoning for it is somewhat opaque), his placid demeanor hides only childish weakness rather than an explosive talent towards violence. Both movies play with denying the viewer what they're looking for, but this one goes much, much further with it, though there is perhaps an irony to the movie being more distancing in part because Gosling is playing less of a sociopath.

[Mr Sausage]

Refn has used this blank, unreactive action hero character before in Valhalla Rising, the movie that this one most resembles (except that one had an apocalyptic atmosphere). In fact that one was even more extreme in that Mads not only didn't betray a single emotion, he also had no lines.

I think splitting hairs about exactly what type of blank, silent hero Gosling is playing is wasted energy. It seems fairly plain to me that Refn simply likes the idea of a totemic hero and the gliding, indifferent atmosphere that lends things. He's done it before in Valhalla Rising, another action-movie-as-stripped-down-mood-piece and he's doing the exact same thing here. I think the two movies can really only be understood in terms of each other.

[Black Hat]

It's interesting to me that most see Gosling's character as the hero I felt Vithaya Pansringarm's character fit that role better. I do see what David is saying regarding dueling forces of sex and violence but I feel in order for that to work it should be rooted or at least have a couple of toes dipped in reality. Far too often I felt Only God Forgives lost itself within its constant calling back of other films or the highly stylized shooting style that left it dueling with itself which considering the terrible script left a bit to be desired to say the least.

[Mr Sausage]

Why should dealing with abstractions (like the way violence and sexuality mingle) need a style rooted in reality? Seems like an equally abstract style is a good fit.

[matrixschmatrix]

Gosling seems clearly to be the protagonist- his character goes through an arc, of a sort, and the movie spends far more time looking at him than at Pansringarm- I don't think the movie's intended to have at its center a real hero (or a real human being), just an experience of righteous judgment in a sin-cursed world.

[mfunk9786]

The revenge demanded of him by his mother is deliberately associated with a particularly heinous act to avoid creating any sort of hero/villain binaries in the narrative. Or at least that's how I perceived it. Everyone is their own unique quantity of wrong in this situation.

[Black Hat]

In my view for that to work well the story needs to find places of plausibility to not just connect the two but to also connect it with the audience's emotions. Drive did this quite well where as this film didn't.

[Mr Sausage]

Plausibility just means realism which just means a kind of presumption about truth, as if hewing closely to what people expect to be real (eg. the plausible) were closer to the truth. I don't think realistic narratives are either more primed to connect with the audience's emotions or less able to deal with a philosophical abstraction like the intersection of violence and eroticism. Obviously the film did not connect with you, personally, but this is something different from denying the above categorically. I think abstracting ideas about human nature from the constructions and deceptions that make up our social reality (ie. a realistic or grounded narrative) is a good way to get rid of the assumptions and conventions distorting the issue and deal with it far more directly and honestly.

Now, whether or not this particular movie actually does that or even contains any real content is up for debate. But I think the reason it fails for you (or even in general) has nothing to do with its abstract style not making a good fit with the content. That seems like an ex post facto judgement.

[Black Hat]

I think I did a poor job of coherently expressing my thoughts...

Plausibility for me means am I buying into what's happening within the context of the world the story has created for me? This does not have to be rooted in realism of whatever I feel is truth but it has to connect me to something to believe about the art's truths. I do agree about the power of abstracting ideas to cleanse the mind forward into a higher plane but I still believe that that connection is rooted within a reality of the art's own creation.

And it certainly wasn't what I came out of the movie thinking but what David brought up made me dig deeper making me further realize why I disliked the film so much as opposed to the mutterings of my initial reactionary, hyperbolic response.

[R0lf]

This felt to me a bit like if Jess Franco was more self serious and had a bigger budget.

Though Jess would have inserted more blatant symbolism.

Slow pan, extreme violence, silent scream as the score swells, SMASH CUT TO SCORPION.

[Sledge.]

This is a good bro-watch. Just broing out with your bros as kneecaps are kicked.

[feihong]

Really? The main message I got from the film is how impossibly un-tough these so-called tough guys are in the face of this arbitrary "god" character. Who I must say never comes across as the hero of the movie for me.

That seems like a testosterone turn-off for me? I dunno.

[JamesF]

I was at the first public screening at Cannes and didn't like it at all, but it was at 8.30 in the morning, so will probably revisit it soon. I know people (including the person who was sitting next to me at Cannes) that seeing it again was like seeing a totally different film.

Refn's dedicating this (and Drive) to Alejandro Jodorowsky bugged me somewhat; for all their bloody violence and shock tactics, there's a real humour and whimsy to Jodo's films that Refn's self-important, super-serious fetishising shows no traces of.