Only God Forgives | Nicolas Winding Refn | July 19th, 2013
The Devil Is Real. Can lightning strike twice? Coming off the heels of 2011’s runaway indie hit Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn swaps the streets of Los Angeles for the dingy alleys of Bangkok. The film has polarized audiences and critics alike, with opinions ranging from laud to utter disgust. Inevitably subject to comparison with it’s predecessor, (and there are quite obvious similarities between the two), Only God Forgives succeeds in it’s differences. To put it quite plainly, it doesn’t give a damn what we think.
Ryan Gosling portrays Julian Thompson, an American drug smuggler operating in Thailand, who seeks revenge for the death of his brother. While his character is once again tongue-tied, Gosling manages to distance himself from being the Driver within the first few minutes on screen. Winding Refn purposely frames him as a man without an icon this time. No scorpion jacket, no Hungarian driving gloves, and no car. Julian has his own past, his own demons, and his own plethora of problems. Crystal Thompson, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, is Julian’s ruthless and borderline psychopathic mother. Her mind and body have been prematurely aged; years of crime and stress, including the death of her husband and son, eroding whatever empathy that existed. Julian’s relationship with his mother raises more than a few Freudian eyebrows, with a palpable sexual attraction existing between the two. (Whether jokingly or not, she has no trouble with talking about her sons’ penis size amid regular dinner conversation.)
Though Gosling and Scott Thomas are billed on the marquee, Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm plays a role just as large. Lt. Chang is the “Angel of Vengeance”, a man who reigns moral judgement upon his denizens in a violent fashion. He exists as a spectre, an idea dealing in absolutes at a blade’s edge. In stark contrast, he has a seemingly normal family and a quiet home, also enjoying karaoke in his free time. Chang’s poise and mannerisms (or lack thereof) give him a surreal quality, reflecting the entire film’s dreamlike aura.
In fact, Only God Forgives is entirely about contrast. From the opening scene on, the Bankok nights are bathed in cyan and magenta. The gorgeous cinematography that made Drive so pretty is still here, each scene shot with immaculate detail. I felt reminded a bit of Gaspar Noé’s Enter The Void (2010), which has a similar neon glow. (In fact, Winding Refn gives Noé a “Special Thanks” near the end of the credits.) Cliff Martinez returns to provide an eclectic electronic score, producing something a bit more elaborate than last time. Martinez trades Kavinsky, College, and the Chromatics for some localized Thai sounds. Mai, (played by the beautiful Rhatha Phongam,) sings ‘Falling In Love’ and Pansringarm covers Thai band Proud’s ‘You Are My Dream’.
The song is oddly fitting in name, composition, and in it’s performance. Between the color saturated world, Julian’s fragmented flashbacks, and fairly irrelevant dialog, Only God Forgives plays out exactly like a dream. While you are present in the events, you feel somewhat disconnected from everything happening…until it turns violent and becomes a nightmare. Emotional response is what drives us to become self aware while dreaming, negative or positive.
Within the first moments of the film, a fourteen-year-old girl has already been brutally raped and killed, her killer’s skull smashed in, and her father’s arm cut off. Drive contained a few startling moments of violence, but was essentially a love story. Only God Forgives is based around violence, but not in a haphazard or superficial way. It toys with the actual human principle of violence, testing the audience’s morality at every turn. You lose yourself in the droning synthesized music, the colors and lights, seeing blurs of movement and hearing muted speech…until you feel ‘it’ approaching. There is some primal evolutionary device we possess, recognizing danger in the gut before it happens. You snap back into the nightmare, and instantly are juxtaposed as both the victim and the swordsman. More than once I found my muscles contracting as I anticipated what was about to take place; implied atrocities far worse than actual gore. Watching Julian cut into the still-warm corpse of his mother and insert his hand into her flesh, representing sexual intercourse and fulfilling his warped, incestuous desires, will send even the most adoring Ryan Gosling followers running for the hills. In it’s abrupt ending, the film leaves you in a state of blind shock. It is sentient, as if we’d woken from our own nightmare with a startling jolt. Essentially the last man standing, Chang almost lulls the audience back to unconsciousness, resembling the soothing comfort of a music box. It happened, now it’s over. Go back to sleep. Dream on.
It holds no reservations, makes no apologies, and spares no one. While it may not have the same appeal as Drive to some, Nicolas Winding Refn has delivered another brilliant piece of art, aided by some immense talent. Only God Forgives plays a dark ballad upon the neurons of your brain and the sinews of your flesh. In a world lacking morality, what choices would you make? The answer you find might scare you.
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