Film: Only God Forgives

Director: Nicholas Winding Refn
Genre: Drama
Source: France ? (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Raleigh Theaters
Grade: B

Only God Forgives is a difficult film to process, and, I think, an even more difficult film to like. I left the theater feeling as though I'd been hit repeatedly with a hammer, but it's the kind of film that hasn't left me since. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. All I know is that for a film with so few words, there is a lot to work through in this movie.

Visually the film is stunning, in many senses. It's beautifully shot, full of shadows, deep reds, and careful composition. One fight scene 2/3 of the way through the film is absolutely breathtaking, full of bird's eye view angles that highlight the ballet of the battle. Yet what Refn is composing in other shots is often so disturbing as to be off-putting: bodies sliced or smashed open, horrible people acting horribly, karaoke. It's a deliberately unnerving exploration of the darkness within (significantly Ryan Gosling in at least two shots stares into the blackness behind an open door, evoking Nietzsche's famous quote about staring into the abyss, which itself could be the theme of the movie). Gosling repeatedly looks at and obsesses over his hands--significant, we learn later, for what those hands have done at his mother's bidding prior to the movie's beginning--and we have to ask what we ourselves might be capable of, and at what cost.

Of course, the film also draws much of its dramatic arc from Jacobean revenge dramas, as more and more characters decide to take revenge for a perceived (or real) wrong done to them. There are lots of reasons behind Gosling's character's apathy towards avenge (not least of which is the ability he has to actually have some empathy for other people), but Refn seems uninterested in really fleshing out those details, allowing a few symbolic actions, elliptical conversations, and soulful Ryan-Gosling-looks to do the work of psychological development. Can a person show mercy? Should he/she? And what does mercy look like?

Through this bloody story--and often the source of the blood--walks Vithaya Pansringarm's silent and dangerous police officer. "Do you know who he is?" one character asks one of Pansringarm's potential victims, and the answer is obvious: if not God himself, he is at least an agent of justice, supernatural in his powers (such as the sword he pulls seemingly from his spine) and cleansing himself after acts of violence by singing haunting karaoke songs to his fellow officers. His stoic face is disturbing in its lack of emotion, and it is this figure Gosling must ultimately confront, no matter what his fate may be.

There's so much more to analyze here: the oedipal complex, Gosling's character's sexual fantasies and dysfunctions (probably related to the oedipal issues), the lack of affect among most of the characters. Certainly it's not a film for everyone--at the showing I attended, one older couple walked out around the time Gosling screamed at a prostitute to take off a dress he had bought her, and things got darker from there. And I don't think it's a perfect film by any stretch--the editing, while purposeful, is at times a little too obtuse for its own good, and I don't know what exactly Refn was doing with the two masturbation scenes, unless they have something to do with Gosling's final interaction with his mother. But it is a film that has stuck with me. The brief review on Filmspotting did help me put it in another framework by calling it "nightmarish" and Lynchian, and those elements are there as well. But it is one more film that suggests Refn is a craftsman of the cinematic art, and one to keep watching. 

Alternate Film Title: "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."