You Were Never Really Here (Film Review)

2018 Amazon Studios
Written and directed by: Lynne Ramsay
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alex Manette, John Doman, and Judith Roberts
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 90 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 6/10

There's always someone who sees how things are generally done, and thinks, Hey, I'm gonna do the opposite of that. Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here is an anti-film, in that it does things in a way most films do not. Joaquin Phoenix's violent, mentally disturbed Joe rescues kidnapped children from sex slavery. Most films would introduce Joe through action, showing him doing just that, but not You Were Never Really Here.
The film begins with Joe having just completed...something, and now...possibly trying to kill himself, as he has violent flashbacks of...something. Maybe he had a terrifying childhood? It's never clear. Eventually, Joe makes it back home to his elderly mother, and in the film's only scene of humans acting like humans, gently ribs her, and puts up with her unwarranted protests as he takes care of her. Then he picks up his payment for whatever he did before the movie began, which the audience eventually finds through dialogue, is rescuing a wealthy person's child from sex slavery. There are extraneous scenes of Joe having issues with the middleman and requesting a new one before the film even lets the viewer know what Joe does, which most films would have cut due to them adding nothing to the film, but You Were Never Really Here leaves them in. Joe then gets assigned a new mission to rescue a Senator's daughter. Apparently, this is given to the unhinged Joe and not the FBI because the whole thing is hush hush? The Senator asks Joe to be ruthless to the people who have taken his daughter, and at this point, it seems like things are really going to take off.
They do...sort of, like a plane that never flies more than a few feet off the ground. Joe does find her, and a huge, jarringly open can of conspiratorial worms. This would be the section of the film that includes cathartic violence and a plot clearly communicated by visuals and dialogue. You Were Never Really There doesn't include those things, though. Ramsay likes to film Phoenix walking up to people with a hammer in his hand, before immediately cutting to those bodies lying on the floor in a bloody pool. You can infer what happened, but you never see it. Maybe Ramsay is trying to show that Joe himself receives no catharsis from this violence, as indeed, when violence is perpetrated by others, it is shown in graphic detail. Maybe Joe blacks out while he's doing it--the film is entirely told from his perspective. If there's any violence that any viewer wants to see, it's violence perpetrated upon sex traffickers. You Were Never Really Here never really gives the viewer what they want. Maybe that is commendable in this case...but at the same time, it's not very cinematic to continually perpetrate your main character's actions off-screen. Film is obviously, a visual medium. After Joe shoots a henchman late in the film (this particular violence is communicated by showing Phoenix firing a gun at nothing, then cutting to a body on the floor), he learns from the henchman's dying words that far more powerful forces are in play than Joe initially realized...at least, that's what I saw on Wikipedia. Ramsay makes sure to have this dialogue spoken in such a quiet whisper and drowned in so much ambient sound, it isn't intelligible. You Were Never Really Here is an anti-film. You want action? Sorry, it happens offscreen. You want plot? Sorry, it's communicated by unintelligible dialogue.
This is Ramsay's first film in seven years. Her imagery is striking, even when it doesn't make any sense. Phoenix, as he often does, pours himself completely into his broken character; he vanishes. You Were Never Really Here ends on somewhat of an optimistic note, though that's up for debate. However, as the proceedings have meant nothing, it's hard to take any emotional impact from its final minutes.
You Were Never Really Here received a seven-minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival. Maybe all of those folks, forgetting how common this type of movie was in the 70's, are tired of film, as well.