In the beginning of Only God Forgives, Ryan Gosling tells his mother that his dead brother raped and killed a fourteen year old girl. “I’m sure he had his reasons” his mother replies.
This is the kind of cruelty and lack of regard for human life that Only God Forgives is framed around. It’s a nasty, mean-spirited film that beats the viewer in the face with a broken beer bottle, pisses on them, then calls them a “pussy” on the way out the door. It’s also one of the most beautifully filmed pictures I’ve ever seen in my life. From a technical stand-point it is flawless, every frame is perfect and rich with color, accompanied by a masterful score by Cliff Martinez. However, there isn’t really much of a plot, it doesn’t have any structure and all the characters are one-dimensional at best.
The story surrounds Julien (Ryan Gosling) a cocaine and heroin exporter who runs a small-time boxing club in Thailand as a front for his operation. Working with his older brother, Billy (Tom Burke) and his mother in the states (Kristin Scott Thomas), the operation goes sour when Billy is murdered at the hands of a stoic, samurai sword-wielding police captain (Vithanya Pansringarm) with his own brand of vigilante street justice. Julien’s mother comes to Thailand to get the business running again (while the police captain breathes down their necks) and to seek revenge for her son’s murder. Julien isn’t so sure Billy’s murder deserves to be avenged, but his mother feels otherwise, telling Julien he was always the lesser son with a smaller penis and hinting to him that she should have had an abortion.
From there the film turns into a somewhat predictable blood bath with Julien’s crew killing the police captain’s cronies and vice versa. Critics have universally panned Only God Forgives claiming it’s excessive use of brutality is gratuitous, unearned and even glorified. I don’t know how true this is. While there aren’t any conventional plot devices at work here and no real characters for the viewer to latch onto, I think it says a hell of a lot about male posturing and the “macho man” archetype to which most American men fall victim. The need or desire to be the “big man”, the hunter and gatherer, “the strong, silent type” as Tony Soprano would put it, men who punch first and ask questions later. Make no mistake, men are the ones running things in Only God Forgives, while the women are relegated to hanging back and keeping their mouths shut.
There is a great scene where the police captain tortures one of Julien’s associates in a karaoke bar, and all the women there sit silently, with their eyes closed, eerily resembling porcelain dolls. Kristin Scott Thomas might be the exception to the rule, but her bravado seems to be a cheap imitation of a man that doesn’t get her very far in the film. Only God Forgives is littered with Freudian psychology and Oedipal references regarding the relationship of mother and son, and one scene very literally hints at Julien’s desire to crawl back up the womb and hide.
There isn’t much emotion on the table in Only God Forgives, partly because there are no great performances. There aren’t any bad performances either. There aren’t any performances, period.
Every actor dead-pans the entire way through Only God Forgives, with the only exception being Kristin Scott Thomas who just plays a one-dimensional bitch. Perhaps with stronger characters, the cryptic themes of Only God Forgives would shine brighter, or perhaps I’m reading too much into this blood-soaked exercise in style. However, the strength of the cinematography and score is too amazing to ignore, and too amazing to simply discard Only God Forgives as meaningless trash.
This keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entire 90 minute runtime, while not really caring what happens to these “characters” you barely even know. It’s a violent, nerve-wracking, sometimes even sickening movie-going experience that can completely numb a viewer. Most people will absolutely hate it, but you should respect the film for trying something different.
In a time where Grown Ups 2 is the American box office reigning champ, Only God Forgives is a fucking gift from above.
