Only God Forgives

Man, people aren't really digging Only God Forgives. It's currently sitting at 37 on Metacritic, and critics are calling it long, boring, vulgar, misogynistic, cruel, vicious and overly violent. You know, all the things that Drive was. But I'm going to play the snobby hipster who's almost always wrong and say that they didn't get it. Here's the thing: Drive hid all of the aforementioned within a classic Hollywood story and a European arthouse aesthetic that got all the critics nostalgic and googly-eyed. So Nicolas Winding Refn decided to see how much they loved it. How much they were willing to experience. He pulled a Hangover Part Two. I love Nicolas Winding Refn. I hold Bronson, Valhalla Rising, Drive and now Only God Forgives as some of the most unique, gorgeous and entertaining movies I've seen in recent years. What I find even more entertaining is watching a director with Hollywood at his fingertips dovetail his career just so he can tell them to go fuck themselves. Cheers, Nic, you're a top bloke.

Only God Forgives is arguably even more bare bones than Drive was. Julian (Ryan Gosling) runs a boxing club in Bangkok that doubles as a drug dealing operation. His partner in crime and brother, Billy (Tom Burke), gets a bit jippy one night and hits the town looking for an underage girl to rape. He eventually finds a willing participant in a brothel owner, who brings his daughter in. Billy ends up deciding rape wasn't all he was feeling, and savagely murders her. The police are brought in, and the sergeant, Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), brings the girl's father to the scene of the crime and leaves him alone with Billy, offering him the chance to do what he feels is right. The father beats Billy to death, and Chang takes the father's hands as punishment. Meanwhile, Julian and Billy's mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), flies in and demands that Julian take appropriate revenge for the family. He gets the handless dad in a room, but after hearing the man claim that he was forced to kill Billy by the "Angel of Vengeance", he's unable to do the deed. Not long after, Chang's involvement becomes apparent to Crystal and all hell breaks loose as she takes increasingly violent means to see someone, anyone, die for the death of her son. Just a nice little trip to the movies, right?

But it's not this unrelentingly disgusting and vulgar just for shits and giggles. Instead, it serves to both cover and accentuate the themes underpinning this film. At it's heart, this movie is about spiritual honour; what it means to be wholly and unquestionably responsible for something (in Julian's case, family, and in Chang's case, humanity) and the deeper understanding of life and existence that such a level of thinking can provide. Early on, the film establishes the concept that though we view the film largely from Julian's point of view, we're not necessarily always operating within reality. Just following Billy's death, Julian is walking down a narrow, neon-red corridor towards a pitch-black doorway. He's clearly fearful of what exists in the dark, but he's compelled forward anyway. As he arrives at the doorway, he slowly reaches his hand into the void. Chang emerges from the darkness, sword held high above his head, and swings it down, severing Julian's hand. In the following scene, his hand is back on his body. At another point, Julian sits in a club, admiring a prostitute on stage, dancing. He imagines putting his fingers in her, but becomes irritated when men further down the table are ogling her as well. He calmly walks towards them, and as one of the men raises a glass to his mouth, he slaps it into his face. Bleeding profusely, he drags the man into the hallway by his upper jaw. Halfway down, we cut back to Julian on the chair. This was merely what he wanted to do, and as he stares at the dancer, his gaze eventually moves down to his hands stretched out in front of him.

Julian is obsessed with his hands, in these visions and in reality, because he knows that by the end of the film, he will lose them to Chang as judgement for the crimes of his family. What affords him this understanding is the honour that he operates with. From the beginning of the movie, he knows that he will lose his hands, but he does not know why. When he meets Chang, he understands: he is in the presence of God. This isn't exactly revelatory for him, nor does it change his actions from then on: once again, from the beginning, he operates almost mechanically, because he knows that whatever he's done, does or will do has been predetermined. And make no mistake: Chang is God; an all-powerful, all-knowing judge, juror and executioner that commands as much adoration, respect and fear from his colleagues as he does anyone who comes to be beneath his blade. When Julian asks if Chang would like to fight him, he knows that he is about to receive the beating of a lifetime, but that doesn't matter: this is God's will, and he is powerless to fight it. In operating with honour, he shall die with honour, which, within his shitty existence, is the best he can hope for.

What threatens his honour most throughout the film is his mother. Kristin Scott Thomas does an unbelievably disgusting and brilliant job as Crystal; never have I heard someone bring this much weight to a phrase like, "And how many cocks can you entertain with that cute little cum dumpster of yours?" She paints the picture of a mother connected and disconnected to her children in all of the wrong ways. An incestuous relationship with Billy is hinted at; which sheds a bit of light at both his actions at the beginning of the film and what he says to Julian before doing so. "It's time to meet the devil," he mumbles, because there's no way Satan can be as bad as her. She demeans, insults, berates and belittles Julian at every turn, but when the prostitute he disguised as his date for a dinner with her has the nerve to suggest she's a little unbalanced, Julian violently defends her honour. There's that word again; Julian wishes she wasn't his mother, but that does not excuse his responsibility to her. Later in the movie, Chang passes judgement on Crystal and stabs her in the throat. Julian comes across her body, cuts open her stomach and puts his hands inside her, to see what she was made of; to see if there was any shred of a mother in there.

What I love most about this movie is that I could be completely wrong in my interpretation. It's so refreshing to watch a film that assumes its audience has the intelligence to connect their own dots. Only God Forgives is an intentionally ambiguous, gorgeously filmed piece of art that I loved every minute of. But I'd be a fool to think it's something everyone should enjoy. Despite being shorter than Drive, it feels immeasurably longer. The film operates like some sort of sedated fever dream, with a pulsing, hypnotic aesthetic that's almost sleep-inducing. It helped that I was a little bit drunk when I watched it. In describing its scenes, I know for some people the movie will sound like an utterly disgusting, reprehensible piece of shit, and I wouldn't be one to do anything but respect their opinion and respectfully disagree with them. There are movies that present their answers upfront. There are movies that try and whip a little bit of symbolism in there for those willing to look for it. And then there's Only God Forgives, the whacked-out junkie in the corner, who everyone would be hearing the world's greatest story from if only it wasn't pausing every three seconds to stab at the air and shout "FUCKIN' GUTTER CUNTS." I'm grateful there's people like Nicolas Winding Refn out there, but I'm even more grateful that he doesn't care if I am.