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I've seen it since it's already released in France, so I can just post something about it if it can help but it's already Page 2, now.

TheDudeAbides wrote:ya I know it really bothers me too when people, specifically many of friends are saying things like "hah, looks like only god forgives sucks; they booed it at Cannes" and have now basically already decided they aren't going to like it because early buzz is that the film isn't very good. Why not wait until you see it yourself to decide if you don't like it.

Getting booed at Cannes is practically an affirmation of a film's quality.

If anyone's interested, you can now stream the soundtrack on pitchfork.

If Only God Forgives isn't playing around your area you'll be able to nab it off of iTunes ($7 for rental/$14 to own) and other VOD outlets.

Kellen wrote:If Only God Forgives isn't playing around your area you'll be able to nab it off of iTunes ($7 for rental/$14 to own) and other VOD outlets.

There's no sign of it in theatres around here. I would much rather see it on the big screen, but I don't know if I'll be able to wait it out.

This was one of my most anticipated films of the year, and I've been following it since the Cannes premiere. It has it's share of positive reviews a lot of the press has been negative and most critics have panned it. I've noticed that a lot of the critics of the film are saying it doesn't live up to Drive. I think that is part of the problem, a lot of people are seeing silent Gosling, violence, cool lighting and thinking this is the unofficial sequel; When in fact Only God Forgives has more in common with Refn's films Fear X and Valhalla Rising. I enjoyed the film quite a bit, I'm not sure if its going to end up in my top five at the end of the year or anything like that but theres a lot of cool stuff going on. Cliff Martinez's score kicks ass again and sounds like something straight out of a horror film. Also, Larry Smith's cinematography is so on point in this specifically in the scenes that take place inside of bars or karaoke clubs. Kristin Scott Thomas is good in this although, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a tad bit disappointed with how hammy she seemed in a couple of scenes. Ryan Gosling lovers/haters are going to be split on this again just like Drive/Place Beyond The Pines etc; Ryan does seem at times like he is showing more emotion than he did in Drive but the stigma of him only having a few lines of dialogue in the film/doing a Steve McQueen impersonation is gonna bug some people. I suppose one of the film's weaker points is the plot, rather than the whole picture flowing together it's almost like we get a series of short 10 minute vignettes from time to time; It might work for some and turn some other people off. If you don't like violence in films then get ready to cover your eyes OGF has quite a bit and it's pretty brutal at times

Spoiler

We're talking knives to the eyes, spikes in ear drums, swords cutting people's chests open.

Also, the "Wanna fight?" part from the trailer doesn't disappoint, definitely one of the coolest parts in the film.

Just got back from seeing this in the theater, and it was easily the best film I've seen so far this year.

I don't know if I can form my thoughts into any kind of coherent analysis so I'm just going to go on a long rant about everything that ran through my head as I was watching it, and when I catch it a second time in theater and hear some other reactions maybe I'll aim for more coherence.

Essentially at it's core, I did take this to be just a sort of macho action movie, though Refn seems to want to focus and examine the more latent emotions of the genre that seem to be always present and make up the heart of a lot of these films though rarely ever the focus.

Though it may be a faulty comparison in a lot of ways, I found it most useful to compare to something like Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire, only substituting sex for all the emotions two dudes feel for each other in a martial arts movie. True it's very similar to what one find in a Chang Cheh or Budd Boetticher film, but it really seemed like Refn was focusing more on the anticipation, build up, and denial over the payoff. There even seems to be a direct comparison to Gosling's character's own sexuality in the film.

Spoiler

Up until the inevitable confrontation between Gosling and Pansringarm, the rest of the violence in the films seems more of a critique of the genre. It's all really gruesome and seems to be just superior fighters punishing anyone who falls outside of their own personal code of honor. Meanwhile in between the characters size each other up, dream about each other, and fantasize about their inevitable fate.

When Gosling actually asks Pansringarm to fight is the only time there is ever any kind of romance to the action. It's no longer about the violence, but just 2 men testing out each other's fighting capabilities. I can't count how many kung fu movies I watched that seem to be lots of filler fights as you wait for the two strongest men, who often share a similar moral code, being forced into a situation where they must fight to the death. Refn seems to strip the formula to it's bare bones and focus on the core emotions behind the genre.

There's a lot more I haven't sought out yet, the obvious father/son comparison with Gosling and Pansringarm, and Gosling's mother issues. There also seem to be a lot of false macho icons in the film. The mother tries to make it all about familial competition, Gosling and his brother and the size of their cocks. Then at the end the guy sitting down in the skull mask. But Gosling and Pansringarm transcend all that, they have the same moral code and are therefore on a whole new playing field from the rest.

I also haven't mulled over the dedication to Jodorowsky at the end, if it even has any relationship with the rest of the film. I was thinking Bunuel most of the time I was watching, but father/mother issues and hand chopping off is certainly in the realm of Jodorowsky, particularly Sante Sangre and El Topo. So perhaps what I read as Refn channeling Bunuel, was actually Refn channeling Jodorowsky channeling Bunuel.

Anyways I'll put more thought into it later, but I'd be curious if any aspects of that seem to ring true for anyone else's experience with the film.

It's... I don't know. It feels like it's working to build a library of powerful images, but the most memorable ones to me are incidental- people walking down electric hallways and staring at nothing, not the ones the movie seems to build to. It fits into the sort of general question that Refn's films seem to ask, the nature of a fundamentally violent person in a society that cannot accept violence, here inverted; Gosling's character is someone who seems to want to pull away, but is not allowed to do so from any direction.

Spoiler

Maybe the weirdest element, generally speaking, is that he's not very good at violence- not comically bad, but not the Clint Eastwood killing machine that his persona seems to imply. Nor does he ever really explode, for all the movie seems to be building to it throughout.

Drive worked in part by denying the audience some of the genre pleasures they would presumably expect; it's not really a car chase movie, in the end. However, it allows other genre pleasures in from a number of angles, and builds the world out of character actors who are difficult not to take pleasure in. Here, the only person allowed to give a performance that isn't steely eyed stares is Kristen Scott Thomas, and her character is extremely one note (though that note winds up being twisted in ways one wouldn't immediately expect) and the movie spends so much time sitting and staring that one forgets that there's violence to be done. It's not a bad movie- I'll still be excited for whatever Refn does next- it just feels like kind of a nothing.

YnEoS-

Spoiler

I don't think I saw the fight in question as being a contest between two titans with a similar moral code- Pansringarm is too much an impassive god of a man for Gosling's largely negative character to seem on the same plane, and to me it felt like Gosling was seeking punishment more than any kind of a real contest.

Terrible. Lit like a 70s steamroom and paced and edited like the end of 2001 minus any of the meaning built up, the cypher characters have no personal details to make anything they do logical or compelling (and im doing my best here to pretend Having Relatives is a personal detail like Tree of Lifers must think it is). And who can get a shitty performance from Kristin Scott Thomas? Also major points off for suffocating me in a stereotyped Thailand of corrupt martialartistkaraokeprostitute people who just cant stand those uppity whites who own all the businesses we see. Gosling's character has none of the vulnerable humanity but all of the contrived Performance arsenal of his Drive character, retroactively ruining most of the luster of that one. And why was this dedicated to Jodorowsky also? Did they all live in a house together again or some shit? That might explain the sequelitis but not the glacial empty racist bullshit. Stupid. Fuck this movie.

This isn't a disaster and it's not the cult masterpiece some will try very hard to make it, either. I was no fan of Drive but I was surprised at how much I liked this. Which is to say it was just okay but I was surprised I liked it at all. Gimme a breaksville on anything here being a critique on violence though, as this film has such a hard-on for grotesque macho displays of aggression and gore that you have to really want it for it to mean something subversive. That said, I think Refn's unhinged approach to so much masculine posturing and icy cool ethos works for the material far more than its intermittent usage in Drive. Like Sucker Punch, here's a young auteur given the cinematic toolbox to make whatever he wants and the result is a candy-colored phantasmagoria that says a lot more about the guy in charge than anything else. Otherwise how much one gets out of this is the direct result of the level of patience and interest one can suss out of a collection of irredeemable and repulsive "characters" aggressively fronting and sleepwalking through beautiful neon nightscapes. I admired Refn for going for broke, but the end result is still so self-serious that it's hard to take it as anything other than a brightly-lit therapy session. And on that level there is some interest, I guess

To those who have seen the film, how necessary is it to see on the big screen?

domino harvey wrote:Gimme a breaksville on anything here being a critique on violence though, as this film has such a hard-on for grotesque macho displays of aggression and gore that you have to really want it for it to mean something subversive.

Is this a response to anyone in particular, or just an idea that's circulating? Because if what I said makes it sound as though Refn's critiquing violence here, than I didn't express myself clearly- I think Refn has a perennial interest in violence, and in the intersections between uncontrollable, spontaneous violence and more channeled, socially allowable kinds, but he's certainly not interested in criticizing violence itself. Interestingly, the mommy issues one might normally lay in to psychologize why a character is capable of brutality and violence seem here to work in somewhat the opposite direction; it's certainly as far from a social problem film about the origins of violent behavior as you could get.

criterion10 wrote:To those who have seen the film, how necessary is it to see on the big screen?

I'd say if you were going to see it at all, the theater's the place to do it- the format interest that the lighting and sound and compositions bring to it are probably the strongest part of the movie, and they don't seem to me as though they'd translate well to a smaller screen.

matrixschmatrix wrote:It's... I don't know. It feels like it's working to build a library of powerful images, but the most memorable ones to me are incidental- people walking down electric hallways and staring at nothing, not the ones the movie seems to build to.

I love that. It always happens to me with horror movies because I'm not interested in the fear or violence, not like when I was a gorehound. Almost like finding a second film between the images, and that's what got me interested in this and Drive which I haven't seen. I like watching mediocre films now. :-k

matrixschmatrix wrote:

criterion10 wrote:To those who have seen the film, how necessary is it to see on the big screen?

I'd say if you were going to see it at all, the theater's the place to do it- the format interest that the lighting and sound and compositions bring to it are probably the strongest part of the movie, and they don't seem to me as though they'd translate well to a smaller screen.

Hmm, alright. I'm going to do everything I can to see this on the big screen. The closest it's playing for me is NYC, which isn't too far but it does require me to set aside a day for the film then. If I don't get around to it by next weekend, I'll just order it from VOD.

Rex Reed calls it one of the worst films ever made ("easily in the top five"). Didn't we have a thread at one point dedicated to his professional hackery? I can't seem to find it. Regardless, it's amazing to see what a large share of his commenters are angry old right-wing white guys. Sheesh, that's one sad corner of the internet.

Gawd, those comments are like the leftovers of a Fox News panel.

bamwc2 wrote:Rex Reed calls it one of the worst films ever made ("easily in the top five").

He said something similar once long ago about Cronenberg's Crash. Can't imagine a better reverse indicator of a film's genuine quality than his condemnation.

It's disheartening to see so many of you setting yourselves up for disappointment. You don't call out critics you dislike when they trash the Oogieloves or whatever else you're not initially interested in. This film is neither as bad as its detractors claim nor good enough to blindly ignore many of the relevant criticisms lobbed

domino harvey wrote:It's disheartening to see so many of you setting yourselves up for disappointment. You don't call out critics you dislike when they trash the Oogieloves or whatever else you're not initially interested in. This film is neither as bad as its detractors claim nor good enough to blindly ignore many of the relevant criticisms lobbed

Yeah, but are Reed's specific criticisms relevant? Oh, and I have to admit that I actually have a kind of perverse fascination with The Oogieloves ("Do ya like buuubbbbleesss?").

Actually, he nails a lot of what's amiss in the film, albeit in a hyperbolic manner befitting someone who's just seen something they hated-- I mean, Reed liked Drive, it's not like he's blind to whatever it is people see in these films

His criticisms may have merit (I haven't seen the movie, nor am I in a hurry to) but I'm so tired of the "one of the worst movies ever made" shtick that it just exasperates me every time I see it, even if it may be true.

What about when he quotes an unnamed somebody else Fox News style ("some say...") declaring the film "cinematic defecation"? Or takes the opportunity to trash all other controversial Danish directors starting with von Trier?

I'm a fan of Refn's last few movies but I never worshiped at the altar of Drive. The way in which that film was at odds with itself seemed considerably less interesting to me than it did to others around here. But there's a weird integrity to the pared-down indulgence of Only God Forgives that plays to the director's strengths. Like Rex Reed and domino say, this film is about nothing beyond its surfaces -- though I'm not sure that's the problem they claim it is. The film manages to be at one and the same time 100% an exploitation picture and 100% an art film. And it's held together from moment to moment by the sheer force of atmosphere alone, which is no small achievement for any director.

Refn steals music, sound and picture ideas from Lynch, Kubrick and even Michael Mann, but he does so pretty skillfully and in the service of evoking similarly dark moods and emotions -- even if they are more or less skin deep in Only God Forgives. To borrow from one's masters this well is also a worthy thing in itself, not unlike, for example, the incorporation of Kiarostami influences in Once Upon A Time In Anatolia.

The narrative is flimsy and it's obviously a retroactive excuse for combining stuff Refn wanted to see together in a film -- Gosling, kickboxing, sword fights, sex tourism, neon, abstract 2001 hallways that end in Lost Highway doorways of darkness. Those upset that Refn is somehow misrepresenting Thailand couldn't be more correct and are missing the point entirely. That's his modus operandi when it comes to making any film -- pick a setting that has a bunch of elements he can sufficiently embellish and abstract, then fetishsize/romanticize/aestheticize the shizzle out of those things to the exclusion of everything else.

As for Kristin Scott Thomas' performance being unintentionally hammy, one-note, OTT or so-bad-it's-good funny -- she's obviously doing that stuff on purpose at the behest of the director. Her character is in the strange position of being the most extreme and ruthless one in the already half-mad world of the movie. If we weren't continually surprised by how far she's willing to go at any given moment, there's no movie. She's also pretty deliberately the (darkly) comic relief. I don't know what audience Rex Reed saw the film with (there's some question as to whether he actually watches all the films he reviews), but the laughter at Scott Thomas' lines where I saw it was hardly derisive and we could hardly wait for her next monologue.

In fact, for there not being much in the way of conventional character or drama, I did find myself strangely interested in the quirks and plights of the three major characters. Aside from Thomas' twisted incestuous drug boss matriarch, there's Gosling's passive masochistic momma's boy and Vithaya Pansringarm's disarmingly deadly martial arts cop -- the sort of little grey man of asskicking who you'd never size up on the street as the one who's going to beat everyone down all at once and then gut their ghosts for good measure.

Btw, for anyone who can't find this in a theater and rents it on demand, if you don't have a great surround set-up, I'd say go with headphones.

Right. I haven't seen it either, and honestly didn't even know that it existed until recently (Since becoming a father & living in a town without any relatives to baby sit, I've seen exactly one new film in the theaters without my son. I don't even pay attention to forthcoming films: just what I read about on review sites like slant, and really anything on home video. It's a sad state of affairs, that'll probably go back to normal soon since we're about to move to the same city that my sister lives in). I just posted it up here since it was Reed being his usual pretentious jerk self.

By the way, that first comment down there is by a writer on Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood website. I swear that he is actually Richard Riehle doing some kind of performance art.

This film is a really interesting "fuck you" to any of the expectations assigned to it. Comparisons to Drive were plentiful (and still are), but Gosling is playing a very different sort of character here in the man child Julian. He's powerless outside of his own fantasy world (as evidenced by the marvelously choreographed beat down he's on the wrong end of, and any of his actual interactions with women) and completely trapped by his family. This is a character who looms throughout the film in eerie silence, egging the viewer on as the film builds and builds - we expect to see some grand revenge, but as the story telegraphs from the beginning, there are no winners here, and Julian has no need for revenge - he realizes how awful his brother was, and merely acts when he has no other choice. The final 20 minutes or so are the film's strongest, because they make sense of the ugliness that came before them. Refn isn't going for high art here, I honestly think he's somewhat in on the absurdist gag that he's pulling on the general populace - but if you're willing to accept that this isn't at all what you expected, you may have a good, or at least interesting, time with this film. It's no masterpiece, but it's a macabre, odd little surprise.

I just got out of theater and I must say I don't know quite what to make of this film. I'm mesmerized by it for sure. Easily one of the most beautiful looking films I've ever seen and the editing was immaculate; but it's a doozy for sure. I can certainly see why many have panned this film, it is definitely not for everyone; very weird, lots of shots of hands and people looking while the camera tracks extremely slowly and heavy with symbolism; very reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch. Refn's framing reminded me a lot of Full Metal Jacket, specifically the wide shots. Once again I was taken in by the atmosphere that Refn created, not dreamlike but nightmare-like; Refn might be the modern master of atmosphere and mood in cinema.

I need to see this again in a couple weeks after I've let this all soak in, for now I would say it's probably the most intriguing film I've seen this year and the film that best fit my taste, but I'm not sure quite where I sit with it just yet