"You've Never Been Here": When Memory Comes to Reality

Dominique 2022-03-28 09:01:04

"You've Never Been Here": When Memory Comes to Reality

Liu Qiang loves movies

When I recommend movies to others, I usually have to figure out which rank you are in first. This doesn't mean looking down on people. If I ask you to recommend me dramas or something, I also hope that you don't recommend those too "hard" to me at the beginning. Take your time, some people smoke all their lives, but they still can't smoke cigars. Woolen cloth. After watching "You've Never Been Here", I can put it on my top-tier movie fan recommendation list. Its story is exquisite, delicate to simple, its techniques are exquisite, exquisite to unfamiliar, and its meaning is profound, profound to obscure. If you don't have a lot of movie viewing experience, especially art movie viewing experience, it will be difficult to draw out the ingenious, exquisite and profound from the simple, unfamiliar and obscure, and you will even scold me for having problems with my vision. Another thing to add is that this movie is very afraid of spoilers. If you don’t want to lose the excellent viewing experience, please go to the movie after watching this paragraph.

"You've Never Been Here" is strictly speaking the foundation of a political thriller, the face of an action hero film, and the lining of a psychological growth film, but the main creator uses stylized narrative and imagery to weaken all of the above-mentioned characteristics: the corruption of political figures Falling down, the point is to stop, the violent means of saving the hero, just a few tastes, the protagonist's inner struggle, just a few strokes. What is even more daring is that it dares to constantly break the audience's type expectations: complex and unpredictable political conspiracy, hearty duel between good and evil, and twists and turns in the mental journey. The main creator's confidence in doing this comes from the fact that the film goes to the back of the above-mentioned types, and uses a highly stylized method to be highly realistic: the hero is not a Transformer, but also has a mother and lives; the security of political figures is not so strong, otherwise the president can still Are you getting shot? The villains don’t die with a bang, they also have opinions on people and things on their side, and they can sing pop songs; weak women are not just waiting for death, and they will not be stupid if they have the opportunity to do it. Wait... It's these very real character settings, detailed elements and very stylized techniques that constantly collide in this story of a bad street hero saving beauty, and a chemical reaction occurs, which makes the film exude a very unique and charming temperament and taste. "Anti-Genre" has taken a new path, so it deservedly won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival.

The ending of "You've Never Been Here" is particularly powerful. As long as you can enter the mental world of Killer Joe created by this movie, you won't find it difficult to understand. The cruel past made Joe extremely painful. They did not only exist in memory. They would often run into Joe's reality and persecute him. For him, death was a relief. When his mother was there, Joe couldn't die because of her mother, and when she was gone, he couldn't die to save Nina, but Nina saved her. She didn't give Joe a new life goal, so Joe "can" Suicide... I say this ending is awesome, because at this moment, Joe's spiritual world is connected with the real world, and we finally feel the pain of Joe's "spirit/past/memory persecuting reality". A standing ovation here!

The ending of the film is still bright. Nina in Joe's coat said "Today is a good day" to wake up Joe - yes, no matter what his past, no matter what his pain, let's live every day now! The two finally "walked" out of the screen, leaving the annoying pain in the quiet screen, in the movie, as if they were "never here".

Don't dwell on the past, cherish the present.

View more about You Were Never Really Here reviews

Extended Reading
  • Vergie 2022-03-21 09:02:09

    The soundtrack drives the rhythm, with a female perspective, focusing on depicting the mental and psychological changes of a killer, and the violence has become less violent, so it is a bit anti-type. A large amount of information is hidden by the creators in the characters' lines, sets, props and other details, flashing back to the past and explaining the past, to support the hero's emotions and behavioral motives, the script is excellent.

  • Madelyn 2022-04-23 07:02:31

    Abandoning the usual narrative techniques, using audio-visual language to maximize the layout, the superb one-man show condenses the details of sound and painting, and a minimal but anti-type script is vivid and colorful. The strong style can break the stereotype, and the hearty soundtrack is simply saving everything. The finishing touch makes the most ordinary story make a big difference within the limited space. The high-intensity flashback is slightly fragmented, and the interrupted narrative occasionally has faults, but the actors' performances and scene scheduling are both powerful.

You Were Never Really Here quotes

  • Joe: I don't even know what the fuck is going on anymore.

  • Joe: Do you know what paradise is? It's a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be.