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Joaquin Phoenix |
Within a minute of starting, director Lynn Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here has already established its disorienting tone. There is a man suffocating as the editing cuts around the sparse plot. It's a violent film, but not one that relishes the kill. Instead, it chooses to be like the scene that follows. As the hit man named Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) walks down a dark alley, he is assaulted. For Ramsey, this is probably the most apt way of describing the movie. Not only is it tough to understand the story, but it's assaulting the senses, creating a deeper understanding of trauma better than any film of the past decade. It's a visceral, disjointed experience that makes more sense as it falls further into fantasy. It's more than a story of one hit man rescuing a little girl named Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov). It's about stopping the cycle of violence, no matter how futile that cause may be.