Only God Forgives (2013)

Crystal: "I don't want to talk about it anymore. Do you mind if I smoke?"

By Nicolas Winding Refn
With Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas and Vithaya Pansringarm

I strongly believe that all art serves a purpose--in some form or the other, it intends to move the viewer, shock, surprise, but also transform the viewer, allow them to transcend if but briefly into something more than they are, but composed of the collective essence of humanity. Or some shit like that.

On that count (and every other count) Only God Forgives fails miserably. The film depicts the story of a drug dealing family based in Thailand. The older son is a blood thirsty scumbag whose taste for violence is almost innocent in its single-mindedness. After he rapes and murders a 16 year old prostitute (having asked for a younger one first) he sets the ball in motion for a film of gore and blood as he is killed by the father of the woman he murdered. His mother, the 'don' of their crime ring, comes to identify his body and berate the young sibling Julian for not avenging his brother. The "Angel of Vengeance", a retired Thai police then slowly tracks down the family.

I almost don't want to give the film the credit of analyzing it. What more is there to say? Unresolved Oedipus complex (the incestuous relationship the mother had with the older son was only too obvious) the repeated imagery of guilt on Julian's part (for wanting to have all the sex with his mother and for killing his father to get to her) the predictable links between 'sex' and 'death' all submerged in a glow of red.

But why should we care? The film never gives us a reason to care about the protagonist's Oedipus complex. So what if he's tormented by guilt for wanting to fuck his mom and having a small penis and being symbolically castrated? The talents of both Ryan Gosling and Kristen Scott-Thomas were wastefully underused, as the characters they played never had a chance to blossom. They remained stock characters from beginning to the end. Perhaps if they focused less on the dramatic music and slow motion scenes they could have squeezed in some fresh material.

Nevertheless, the film never learns and tries again and again to compensate for its lack of substance through its overbearing, classical edgy soundtrack and long shots of every moment possible. I kid you not when I say it takes nearly 15 seconds for someone to move their head in every single scene. We get it, you have nothing to say. We only wish we didn't waste an hour and a half of our life watching a film that seems to have been an overextended directorial masturbation instead of a real film.

1 liked: The songs were rather beautiful. But only ran a paltry seven minutes at most of the film.

I disliked: The pretentious pseudo-intellectual garbage that composed the dialogue/plot.

30/100
I wish I could somehow wash my mind of this film the way Julian kept washing his hands.