Only God Forgives

Nicholas Winding Refn seems to have two filmmaking sides to him.  One is more straight forward (the Pushers, Drive) while the other is much more artsy, symbolic and methodical (Fear X, Valhalla Rising).  Pretentious?  Yea, maybe a little of that too.  Only God Forgives falls into that latter category.

The story is very broad and fairly loose.  A drug trafficking family (Kristen Scott Thomas, Ryan Gosling) wants revenge for the death of their son (Tom Burke).  The cop in charge of the investigation (Vithaya Pansringarm) will not have such unruly behavior take place though.  Badassness abounds and a bunch of people die in some pretty gruesome ways.  Oh, and this all takes place in Bangkok by the way.

Aside from saying that it’s impeccably shot with no steady cam shots (hallelujah!), beautiful vivid colors and gorgeous lighting with tons of shadows, I don’t want to go on too much about it.  I’m still figuring out what things meant and who these characters are.  I don’t know if I’ll ever really find out but this one is definitely sticking with me.

If Drive is the only Refn movie you’ve seen and are expecting something like that then there’s a good chance you won’t be into this.  I know this is gonna sound really fucking stupid but Only God Forgives is more about feeling an emotion (or several rather) than it is about just watching a story about people doing things and when the picture ends you move on to the next one.  With a movie like this the overall feeling you walk away with is equally, if not more, important than the actual plot points.  When I think about this film I don’t think of actual scenes but rather the imagery that Refn puts in front of you like the rotating shot around the cop before he has his fight with Julian (Gosling) or the shot of the cop’s men watching him perform karaoke.  It all blends together to form a blob of a feeling and perhaps a state of mind. 

As you can already guess I really liked this thing.  It’s definitely not for everyone though.  Between the nasty violence, the sparse dialogue (half of which is in Thai), the many shots of hallways ‘n’ shit there’s a lot to potentially turn folks off. 

I’m not sure if I like this better than Valhalla Rising.  This is a little more reigned in than that one was.  Valhalla is more Terrence Malick-y with less story and a lot of nature whereas Forgives (while still being Malick-y) is more Kubrick-y with more story and stunningly photographed scenes that curiously feel a bit off.  I dunno.  I’m actually leaning more towards Forgives at the moment but then again I’m still riding the high of my first viewing.  I need to see it again.