The Top 20 Films of 2018: #3 — YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE
What really separated You Were Never Really Here from other thrillers in 2018 — more so, even, than its impressionistic style and sparse dialogue — was its complete lack of hero. Lynne Ramsay’s fourth (and best) film takes the basic building blocks of so many hard-boiled cop/PI stories, including its Jonathan Ames-penned source material, and scatters them to the wind. Ramsay tears down the notion of self-sacrificing male heroes in favour of a haunting meditation on trauma and how it’s passed on.
Spoilers follow.
He’s not the Messiah…
At the dark heart of You Were Never Really Here sits Joe (Joaquin Phoenix). Even before we hear a word from him or get any semblance of backstory, Joe doesn’t strike us as a “hero”. He’s bulky and beardy, with tatty clothes and, at first glance, is almost indistinguishable from the monsters he’s sworn to slay. As a hired saviour of trafficked underaged girls and brutaliser of their exploiters, his mission seems noble enough, but Ramsay utterly rejects the notion of elevating Joe to a messianic figure.
