Dustin: 1.5 of 5 stars Nick: 3 of 5
stars Average: 2.25 of 5 stars
(Canary on life support)
Dustin: Nicolas Winding
Refn’s Only God Forgives is a
modern-day western set in Bangkok. Ryan Gosling is a drug dealer/Muay Thai manager who is
forced to face off against a cop who enabled his brother to be killed.
It’s
the most depressing and unfunny movie set in Thailand since The Hangover Part II.
So what did you think of Only God Forgives, Nick?
Nick: It’s wonderful
and disastrous. On one hand it was shot beautifully with an intriguing idea, but on the other
hand it
never came to a cohesive whole with all the characters and story wearing thin
by the end.
Dustin: The shots were
composed nicely, and that’s about the only good thing I can say about this
movie. If the same story was in
a poorly produced grindhouse flick with unapologetically bad acting, I might
have liked it better. With
the overproduced glossiness here, it falls flat.
Nick: It has a very
interesting idea going on,
which is anybody can do an evil or good deed, but that doesn’t necessarily make
them evil or good. I want to watch the film again to see if they
highlight this idea with the neon colors behind the characters.
Dustin: Watching this, the way the characters moved slowly and deliberately, I was reminded of a Sergio Leone western. I later read an interview with Refn in which he said, “From the beginning, I had the idea of a thriller produced as a western, all in the Far East, and with a modern cowboyhero.” But this movie failed in comparison to Leone’s films. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly looks lived-in, and you actually care about what’s happening.
Nick: All the characters were interesting, but there was no depth because they were never followed from one scene to another while making decisions. Every scene contained a different character who just appeared with the audience having no idea how they got to this particular scene. And since the film was so dark, I never knew where the characters were to begin with.
Did you like the Oedipus Complex theme?
Dustin: Not really. I thought it was half-baked. I figured that’s what they were going for in one of the first shots with Ryan Gosling and his mother, where she’s sitting on the edge of the bed and he’s standing in front of her in a blowjob-ready position. But I never got the feeling they were trying to develop this theme. I think Refn just thought, “I’ll throw in some Oedipal things. That’ll be fucked up.”
Nick: All the actions of Ryan Gosling’s character point towards his love of his mother. When his brother, his mom's favorite, gets killed, he has no intention of finding the killer because he was always jealous of the love the mother had for his brother, who even comments on how her dead son was more well-endowed than Gosling. Gosling will also not have sex with his very good-looking hooker, but instead watches her masturbate because he is in love with his mother and doesn't want to cheat on her.
Dustin: Perhaps the
problem was the characters were all too stoic and the performances monotone.
Looking back at After Earf, Will
Smith’s performance was perfectly nuanced and naturalistic by comparison.
The biggest
problem with this movie is that it was all very contrived. I mentioned above
Leone’s films feel lived-in. This was clearly shot on location, but none of
the locations looked
natural.
We saw
the cop’s house,
and everything was
arranged neatly and had
its place. There were
no pictures of family on the desk, no ironing board left out, no generic wall
calendar from his insurance agent. Same with Gosling’s apartment. The bed was made, no posters
on the wall, nothing to give you an idea of who this person was.
Nick: Sometimes characters are supposed to act as “forces of nature,” and that’s fine, but to have every character be like that really drags the film down. As you say, none of the characters really live in our world, so it’s hard for us to grab on to a single character and care about them. In No Country for Old Men the audience hardly learns a thing about but Anton Chigurh, but we accept his character because the other characters in the film are real people living in our world with Chigurh acting as the force of nature, wrecking everyone’s lives while having no meaning or consequence.
Dustin: The characters
here came off more as robots than “forces of nature.” No one reacts to
the violence that’s
unfolding in front of them. They just sit there perfectly still and silent. The
director might say this was a stylistic decision, but I have a feeling he just didn't know how to direct them since he wasn't thinking much about what
onlookers should be
doing when he wrote the script, so he just said, “Sit there and do nothing.
I’ll make up some explanation about how this is all supposed to be dreamlike.
It’ll be great.”
Nick: Refn is certainly
a style-over-substance kind of
director.
While
it worked in films such as Valhalla
Rising and Drive, it doesn't fulfill in Only God Forgives.
Dustin: The violence wasn't particularly believable either. People typically don’t just sit still
and let you beat them up or cut into them. After getting in a fist fight with Gosling,
the cop’s hands look pristine. I remember your roommate getting into a fist
fight a few years back, and his knuckles were all busted up and swollen for
weeks. Gosling also smashes a glass of whiskey in some guy’s face for no reason
that wasn't set up earlier
or explained later.
Nick: Its harsh how much you are attacking the realism in this film considering all the other films we’ve reviewed were much less realistic than Only God Forgives. From the beginning the film feels like a dream-state with the whole world only existing in the dark with various neon colors giving only glimpses of people’s faces. Attacking this film for not being realistic is kind of moot. I don’t think he was trying to make a coherent film, but one that was about style in movements, color and sound, and less about plot and character.
Dustin: Those other movies probably made it easier to
suspend disbelief.
Nick: Do you think that’s because they were labeled as
science fiction or some other genre so before you saw it you already
expected it to be far from realistic?
Dustin: I don’t think those movies were simply advertised as a certain genre. They used established elements from their genres so the audience knew what to expect within the first few minutes, even if they went in fresh. I didn't know anything about this movie going in, but it had a noir look, and the opening boxing sequence was gritty and realistic, so I thought moments that strayed from that feel were somewhat jarring.
I think Refn just didn't realize hitting someone in
the face hurts your hand more than it hurts the other person’s face, which is pretty
common in movies.
Nick: That goes back to
my force of nature argument. I made the assumption the detective had trained his
entire life in martial arts, and the more you bloody your
knuckles,
the more it would take to really
mess them up. This scene has been shown in films like Kill Bill, Volume 2 where she is
hitting the wood and her hands hurt and she can’t hold chopsticks, but later on she
can do it with no pain and not as much blood and bruises. “Force of nature” just implies that
the detective was
unstoppable,
but we have no idea how he was created, but we are supposed to accept it because of
the story. Though I’m not saying I think it should be accepted in this film, because I agree it
was poorly done.
Dustin: Yeah, the movie never established he was a good fighter, just that he could use that sword of his. So I wouldn't know if he was trained by Pai Mei.
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