You Were Never Really Here (2017)

You Were Never Really Here (2007)

Written and Directed by: Lynne Ramsay
Joaquin Phoenix won the Best Actor, Lynne Ramsay won the Best Screenplay at Cannes.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video. 

Lynne Ramsay has a terrific voice as a filmmaker. There is a lot of rage in her films, which is expressed in a poetic way - which creates a very peculiar tone. It's beautiful and ugly at the same time. It's comforting and discerning at the same time. I really enjoyed her film before this, We Need to Talk About Kevin, too. The thing with thrillers is, except for auteurs like David Fincher or Bong Joon-ho's work, or unless there is a strong directorial voice, I find thrillers to be pretty boring. For me, it either has to basic to the bare minimum, like a survival drama or it needs to have a subtext. In this film, the best part is that, the conflict is simple and basic. A man is hired by a politician to save his daughter, who is underage and is kidnapped for a racket. It's straight on our face. We can see a simple action drama over here. But what makes it more interesting is the character Joe. The demons he's fighting with. The way he's dealing with his own set of trauma. How it keeps coming back to haunt him no matter how what. And how all of this is expressed through abstract imagery and sound design is what makes it interesting. 

In the modern consumerist world, we find ourselves feeling that the things that we think matter, don't really matter. And for once, we'd want to take a break from everything that doesn't really matter. A film made like this, which is treated in a real way delving deeply into the psyche of the characters - it lets us forget everything that doesn't matter and really focus on what matters. In this film, the only thing that matters is the safety of that girl and the sanity of Joe. It doesn't matter how cool Joe looks, it doesn't matter how rich he is. Nothing else matters.