NOTE: This review was written in 2013 at the time of the film’s release. In light of a recent documentary, ‘My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn’, about the production of the film, I found it relevant to shine new light on its derided and largely forgotten subject matter. In retrospect, I would have written this review slightly differently – certain revisions made, particular flourishes clipped – but I remain confident of the opinion therein.
5/5
While watching Only God Forgives, I was witnessing a long-festering suspicion being cemented right before my eyes; in the 21st century, film by film, a new cinematic language is being born. The DNA can be seen in works as early as Sergei Eisenstein, and the groundwork was laid by latter-century masters like Bergman, Herzog, Malick, and Scorsese. Now, with new-millennium wunderkinds likes Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, and Nicolas Winding Refn, we finally see this new syntax coming into full bloom. Art, just like the organisms that find themselves curious enough to create it, is a constantly evolving picture, and in no film this year is that more clear than in Only God Forgives. Seeing it is less like watching a movie and more like listening to a song by Sigur Rós; you don’t necessarily know what’s being said, but what it’s doing refuses to be ignored.
Explaining the narrative of Only God Forgives would be like trying to describe the structure of ambient music; to even attempt to is to misunderstand the question. The question isn’t “how does this plot progress?”, although some might jump to this conclusion after seeing Refn’s previous film, Drive. The question is about what the film’s hallucinatory rhythm dislodges from the deepest crevice of your Id. Having seen it, I can’t say I truly know what it made me feel. But it did make me feel something remarkable, however nebulous and abstract that something appears on the surface.
The story, if you can call it that, centers around a strange, otherworldly dance between two characters: Julian, a drug dealer who runs a Thai boxing ring as a cover operation, and Lt. Chang, a sword-wielding police officer who seems more ghost than human. Early in the film, Julian’s brother is killed for the murder and rape of a 16 year-old girl. From there, the film becomes a black hole, populated with the most reprehensible non-humans I’ve seen since David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis. However, as any Stephen Hawking afficianado will know, even black holes, the coldest, most sterile objects in the known universe, emit their own strange form of heat and color, and if nothing else, the movie’s narrative framework creates plenty of both.
When the film was finished, my mother turned to me and told me never to write anything like it. I’m not certain I’m even capable. At face-value, this is precisely the kind of self-indulgent filmmaking that’s easy to hate. It is zero plot and all nightmare. Watching it, I was reminded of a similar experiment in loose-knit filmmaking, Beyond the Black Rainbow. I walked out of that film completely cold, yet Refn’s film arguably commits the exact same sins. The difference, I feel, is in the craftsmanship. Where Panos Cosmotos seemed to be playing with half-thought ingredients and the shells of concepts rather than fully-formed ideas (although that is not an dishonorable thing), Refn, a brilliant stylist in the tradition of Brian De Palma, is accomplished enough a filmmaker to understand how to weave images, sounds, and cuts into audio-visual ecosystems designed specifically to evoke moods and feelings. Like Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, it appears to have been constructed out of nothing but feeling. The difference here is that the feelings are not necessarily pleasant ones, and it might take the most devout, open-minded cineasts to find any pleasures in them at all. Of course, this it to be expected. With every great paradigm shift comes a wave of detractors, and this film ha already garnered a small ocean of them
Since my interest in cinema began, the movies that have touched me the most have been the ones to rely on melody rather than novelty. In these open-ended pictures and sounds, we find feelings, thoughts, ideas, and bits and pieces of our identity. It’s why The Master stood above every film from last year and why Martin Scorsese’s remake of Infernal Affairs surged with an electricity the original did not. It’s why no matter how many Slumdog Millionaires or Dark Knights you throw at me, I’ll always go back to the boy and his vampire. In this new age of art and technology, this kind of filmmaking seems to be changing into something more distilled with every passing year. With so much thought being put into the transition from celluloid to digital, perhaps this wonderful transition is going unnoticed by some. Be warned – Only God Forgives is not a perfect film, nor is it a film that will appeal to many. It is, however, a film that proves to me one thing: there’s a hurricane on the horizon, and regardless of what you think, there’s no stopping it. Consider me one of the lucky few to have found his way to the eye.
Only God forgives is available on Netflix.
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: www.spencermoleda.com
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: [email protected]