ONLY GOD FORGIVES

Julian lives in Bangkok and together with his older brother Billy, he manages a gym that serves as a cover for a drug trafficking operation that their mother runs from the United States. One evening, after work, Billy goes to a brothel intending to have relations with a young girl, but a fit of madness drives him to rape and kill the designated one. The police arrive at the scene following reports of screams, and Chief Chang finds a gruesome spectacle, with the father of the murdered girl filled with rage. Chang leaves the man the choice to do whatever he wants with Billy and abandons them alone in the room of slaughter, where obviously the man who has lost his daughter vents his fury on the murderer by smashing his skull. Billy's mother arrives from the United States for her son's death, but at the same time, she is determined to seek justice, so she asks Julian to find and kill the people responsible for his brother's death, only Julian is not particularly inclined to get his hands bloody. In competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, Nicholas Winding Refn transports us into another of his very personal visions of Hell. As in the past, violence overflows from every image, and the protagonist of the turn is called to traverse a path fraught with dangers with the objective of finding a dimension that can bring a bit of order to his decidedly messed-up inner world. And after the great international success of "Drive", Refn renews his partnership with actor Ryan Gosling, who returns here to play this tormented and silent protagonist who must cross the proverbial circles of hell to find himself. The Julian of "Only God Forgives" is, therefore, very similar to One Eye of "Valhalla Rising" and resembles, in the end, Michael Peterson of "Bronson" without that touch of madness that distinguished him, but with the addition of a bit of romance, he would also resemble the protagonist of "Drive", confirming that the Refnian universe has solid common points that return from film to film. Characters, reactions, and types that we find in his characters and that in "Only God Forgives" are catalyzed and split between the two parts of the same coin that are Julian and Chang, the head of the Bangkok police who often and willingly becomes the true main character of the film. The extreme simplicity of the subject of "Only God Forgives" clashes with the complexity of the screenplay. What, when reading the synopsis, appears to be a simple revenge film - which it is in fact - gradually becomes an elaborate fresco of the paths leading to self-affirmation of one's being. In the 90 minutes of duration, the film's protagonist must continuously question himself, his ethics, his convictions, and his affections. Julian is not who his family and the society in which he lives want him to appear, he knows this deep down, but he does not know how to demonstrate it to others and to himself, and thus he is forced to continuously suffer the dire consequences of others' actions, pushed to react as others would want him to. The amputation of limbs that the character dreams, perhaps desires, probably suffers, is precisely this desire to separate from himself the action, action understood as acting, doing things he would not want to do, those limbs that are a symbol and vehicle of male violence. And Refn's intuition, who also writes the screenplay, is above all to bring out the traits of his character through the supporting roles. In the end, Julian does little, seems continuously at the mercy of events, and we perceive his personality through those who surround him, starting with his mother, magnificently played by a Kristin Scott Thomas incredibly beautiful and sexy. A terrible and authoritarian woman, a caring mother with a hint of incestuousness that Refn does not delve into, probably the most fascinating and typical character, not only of this film. Then there is Chang, played by the monolithic Vithaya Pansringarm, this anomalous representative of the law with manners that go beyond his profession, with an ambiguous and almost mechanical way of doing things, a sort of local boss from whom humanity only shines through in his relationship with his little girl. A universe of different and complementary characters that is the jewel in the crown of a film that remains indelible after viewing, to which we must add the extreme technical/esthetic recognizability of Refn's hand. Dilated and almost hypnotic rhythm marked by slow tracking shots, long corridors, gloomy interiors painted with oppressive colors tending toward red and black, music used very well to underscore key moments and accompany ordinary scenes. An extreme recognizability of the style of this good director who is increasingly imposing himself on the interest of critics and the public more and more forcefully. In the end, the only thing that does not convince is the writing of the ending, a conclusion surely pertinent to the intentions of the film but which arrives too suddenly, bypassing a climax that certainly would not have been amiss. A great film "Only God Forgives", imperfect but fascinating, capable of instilling a strange sensation of claustrophobia and discomfort; extremely violent with some points of sadism decidedly extreme (the torture with the pins) that flow calmly also into splatter. Surely not for everyone, but absolutely worth seeing. If you want to read the interview with director Nicholas Winding Refn, click here