As if we needed more evidence that films produced and/or distributed by streaming services are often/usually — contrary to some myopic claims — theatrically released cinematic creations of high quality, with a valid claim to consideration during award season, along comes Amazon Studios’ latest release You Were Never Really Here. Further debunking the naysayers’ hostility and providing additional ammunition for those of us pointing out Netflix and Amazon consistently release movies superior to major studio award contenders, You Were Never Really Here goes into wider release this weekend after a short limited run. But is the field already too crowded for this unique arthouse thriller to make a dent at the box office?
In a week of limited release, You Were Never Really Here has amassed about $3 million at the box office to date, after opening to roughly $130,000 last weekend. Headed into this weekend’s wider release, it faces stiff competition from Dwayne Johnson’s action-popcorn extravaganza Rampage and possibly-overachieving horror flick Truth or Dare, as well as continued strong box office performances by A Quiet Place, Ready Player One, Blockers, and Black Panther.
This slate of films will account for $110+/- million of the weekend’s domestic theatrical revenue, leaving little for the remaining pictures to split amongst themselves. Anything else looks like to finish with $2+/- million or lower, and You Were Never Really Here is in that category.
Being a mostly-silent, R-rated, disturbingly violent arthouse film makes for a set of descriptors typically guaranteed to reduce box office potential, particularly when facing off against a slate of more traditionally successful branded entertainment. There are of course plenty of exceptions, notably the current hit A Quiet Place — itself a mostly-silent R-rated film with indie sensibilities and moments of explosive violence. However, You Were Never Really Here lacks the overt horror overtones and genre positioning that helped A Quiet Place over-perform.
So, despite mostly positive reviews and praise from audiences who’ve managed to find a theater in which to see the film, You Were Never Really Here is inevitably going to rely on parlaying its good critical and limited theatrical audience reception into enough buzz to boost its footprint when it hits Amazon’s streaming service later. And rest assured, it certainly deserves audience’s attention both theatrically and on home entertainment.
If we erased reactionary bias against the streaming giants, then the media and Hollywood discussions around You Were Never Really Here would be focused on the awards-caliber filmmaking by Lynne Ramsay and performance by Joaquin Phoenix, not to mention Thomas Townsend’s cinematography, Joe Bini’s film editing, and Jonny Greenwood’s score. So before even talking about the story itself, the sheer power of artistic skill on the screen is striking and demands attention.
Phoenix’s portrayal of Joe, the hammer-wielding ex-FBI agent who now works as a sort of vigilante-for-hire rescuing missing children and metering out merciless vengeance upon anyone responsible for exploiting the victims. The coldly calculated, efficient manner in which Joe handles his work is in contrast to his otherwise painfully vulnerability in daily life.
So raw are Joe’s emotions and so fragile his psyche, he cannot bear more than superficial, momentary interactions with other people. Every moment he seems engaged in an inner struggle to contain his remorse, and his violent work targeting abusers is a quite literal extension of his personal attempts to strike down and overcome the memories of abuse and exploitation that defined his own childhood and his adult life.
Unable to protect himself or his family as a child, unable to save pleading victims in adulthood, he now spends his life making amends and helping those who cannot help themselves. Imagine how every time he saves someone, it reminds him of the victims he couldn’t save. Imagine the emotional impact and paradigm shift he faces if one of the victims is able to do what he couldn’t do in his own past.
Joe suffers flashbacks to his own childhood abuse and to tragedies in his professional career, and what’s interesting is the way the vague nature of these memories affects our impression of him and the way Phoenix seems to hint at a horrible potential link enhancing Joe’s self-loathing. At times, the childhood memories come in such close proximity to scenes of Joe’s modern day “work” that the distinctions between his childhood tormentor and himself seem to blur, not only for the viewer but also in Joe’s own perception.
The implication that Joe has become some funhouse mirror version of his tormentor — the similarities are intentionally apparent, for a variety of reasons I won’t spoil here — is part of the tragic nature of his character, and Phoenix does a mesmerizing job letting us peer into the messy, nightmarish quagmire of Joe’s thinking, emotions, and memories. There is a redemption arc, but not the sort you expect, and it speaks directly to Joe’s own traumatic relationship with himself and what he’s become in the aftermath of his various lifetime traumas, and whether — or how — he can rescue himself at so late a date and escape his self-imposed isolation.
Lynne Ramsay’s career is a stunner, full of brilliant creations. Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, and We Need to Talk About Kevin were each a testament to Ramsay’s visionary talent, and were she a white male director she’d have long ago been hounded by studios to helm some of their various blockbuster tentpoles. Now, with You Were Never Really Here, the surface action-thriller genre elements of the story are getting her more of the sort of mainstream press attention she deserved earlier.
Ramsay makes a point of avoiding much of the actual moments of violence in the film, showing us aftermaths as often as the event itself. How do people live with violence, the aftermath of it and the damage it leaves behind? That question is about both the victims and perpetrators of violence, and particularly in this film it’s about people who start out as one and become the other. Joe wants to leave no trace behind in his work, to avoid the sight of anyone who might recognize him or what he’s doing, and this is all a reflection of his larger approach to life itself — his mother is his only companion, and he does his best to make sure there will be no trace of him when he’s gone from this world, other than the results of his deeds.
And what are the results? To Joe, he is chasing a debt he’ll never repay, and the reason he wishes to leave no trace is because he regrets the life he’s lived and wants to erase the pain he’s seen and experienced. He must come face to face with an alternative, a sort of what-if that allows him to finally exist in the moment and imagine a life of more than regrets and pain, a life in which we are capable of rescuing ourselves, to find redemption. To finally really be here.
I understand certain generalized comparisons to Taxi Driver, but I also feel it’s necessary not to overstate those comparisons, since the distinctions are equally important. For starters, Travis is less an anti-hero than a s0metimes-sympathetic villain protagonist, for example, whereas Joe is definitely an anti-hero with more emphasis on the “hero” than the “anti.”
Both characters suffer distinctive forms of PTSD, but Joe’s emotional and social isolation arise almost entirely from those past traumas (some in childhood, others as an adult). He is still capable of empathy toward other people, not only his mother but also the various people he rescues in his profession. Joe’s work is guided by a strong need to protect weaker people, and to deliver retribution upon predators. There is no chaos or irrationality behind Joe’s thoughts and actions, even in his darker self-destructive moments.
In contrast, Travis’ past traumas (which are barely suggested, apart from reference to his time in the Vietnam War) seem to enhance pre-existing anti-social tendencies within him, and those tendencies seem to indicate sociopathy.It is the present, as much or more so than the past, that haunts and torments Travis.
Travis is unable to relate to other people, to understand them or identify with them outside of his own narrow needs and desires. People are just supporting characters within a self-obsessed narrative in his imagination, and anyone who fails to live up to his needs and demands becomes an enemy in his mind, and his hostility toward them will quickly turn violent. All of Travis’ actions are impulsive and often (usually?) outright psychotic, without rational logical purpose connecting them.
Both films prefer a stylized balance between hyper-realism and dreamlike arthouse storytelling. Both films are, put too simplistically, about unstable men who set out to rescue young girls from abusers, and both films include instants of unnerving brutality. Beyond that, though, the films are quite different in style, message, and execution.
Notice how much Travis is very present at all times, the city around him playing a central role in his psychotic visions. He’s a man of seemingly no import and who we imagine moves almost invisibly through this world, except he constantly forces himself into the world around him and demands a reaction. It is not so much that Travis isn’t seen — he is seen and he wants desperately to be seen, it is simply that upon seeing him the world around him radically misunderstands him and comes to regret it. There is a lesson, a warning, in his obsessive desire to be seen.
Joe’s life is the opposite of Travis’, then, since Joe seeks to remain invisible and largely achieves that goal. And rather than portray this as a good, modest ideal, the film is telling us it’s good to reach out, to connect with other people and the world around you, and to be seen for who you truly are. Becoming okay with that, and even becoming okay with your own struggles to accept it and deal with it, are part of life. For so violent and hauntingly silent a film, where so much of what we see is the aftermath of events and empty rooms, it is simply telling us it’s okay and to have hope.
If you are looking for a straightforward action story of revenge, akin to The Equalizer or other similar vigilante fantasies, You Were Never Really Here is both technically an entry in that category yet also far afield of it. Which is what we mean when we talk about a film transcending its genre — it’s not that the genre itself is lacking or needs to be transcended for a film to have artistic merit and impress, but rather that a film exists both within genre expectations and also beyond them to the point we are surprised and delighted at the unexpected approaches and upending of conventions.
You Were Never Really Here is bursting with both impressionism and graphic realism, where subtext is present in every image and raw emotion boils just beneath a thin surface incapable of containing an eventual inevitable eruption. The plot points are almost irrelevant, as the larger ideas they present and the deeper questions they raise dominate our experience. This is what we mean when we say we want films that make us feel, and it’s something Ramsay has done consistently through her entire career.
Box office figures and tallies based on data via Box Office Mojo , Rentrak, and TheNumbers.
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