Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Only God Forgives

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.

Nick: While the film is lacking in development of every kind, I really respect Refn and the fact that he is trying to tell a complicated story in a mainstream world. After every film I watch of his, I garner more respect. I saw him at Comic-Con at a panel with Guillermo del Toro, and listening to both of them talking about film made me feel all giddy inside. Like Pacific Rim, I enjoyed this film purely for its originality, but unlike Pacific Rim, I won’t recommend this, for I completely understand the hate it’s getting, and most people probably wouldn't like it. Though I can’t wait for Refn’s next film, whatever it may be.

No comments:

Post a Comment