You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Directed by: Lynne Ramsay | 90 minutes | drama | Actors: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alessandro Nivola, Alex Manette, John Doman, Judith Roberts, Jason Babinsky, Vinicius Damasceno, Kate Easton, Jonathan Wilde, Dante Pereira-Olson, Leigh Dunham

How long does it take for a raw portrait, filmed from below, of some sort of Biblical savage struggling concentratedly through a series of stylistic devices to become irritating? Long, really long, because Joaquin Phoenix is ​​intriguingly good as hitman Joe, who lives with mom (Judith Roberts). So good, in fact, that we overlook a seconds-long image of a New York grocery store with a price tag labeled “33p” on the door.

A moderately cast character like that of abuse victim Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov) is interspersed with the touchingly good Roberts. Lynne Ramsay is a director with taste. In ‘You Were Never Really Here’ she quotes passionately from the rich film history, from Scorcese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ (street life), via Oldman’s ‘Nil by Mouth’ (depiction of violence) and Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ (martyrdom) to the works by Iñárritu (guitar soundtrack). So passionate that the film threatens to become a long video clip of stylistic discoveries.

Is Ramsay actually telling a story or is she manicly trying to show what she’s got, rescued by a masterful Phoenix who excels in every scene? Everything in fact: at three quarters of the film – Joe has already rolled up a child porn network with a hobby hammer, the film threatens to get bogged down in a low-context symphony of violence. And Phoenix seems to finally capitulate in the staccato of actions imposed on him by Ramsay when his traumatized character freaks out.

But then the Scottish Ramsay (‘Lets Talk About Kevin’) turns the bloody pancake and bakes it into movie food after all. Then the film solidifies to a logical climax, with a message of inverted values. The murderer is the moral knight, and innocent victims can easily become murderers, it is said. Stylistically it could have been even more compact, but with a double (and therefore ambiguous) final scene, Ramsay puts a big cherry on the cake, euh … pancake.