June 9th, 2013 
Grace Duffy 
Film: Only God Forgives
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
It is tempting to say that Only God Forgives met with a divisive response at Cannes because the festival’s very particular kind of filmmaker just didn’t get it. Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or but was reportedly booed after the screening, eliciting wildly divergent reviews from critics. From the perspective of a long-time fan, this seems hard to believe. Winding Refn has gone from strength to strength since his stunning debut Pusher, securing Tom Hardy his breakout part in Bronson and then reinventing the noir for a modern age with 2011’s contemporary classic Drive. Only God Forgives reunites the director with his Drive lead, Ryan Gosling, and relocates to a more exotic part of the world in Bangkok. The plot revolves around an American ex-pat who works at his brother’s boxing club, a front for a drug smuggling ring. His brother murders an underage prostitute and is promptly beaten to death by the girl’s father. Gosling’s Julian must then locate the culprit as his mother arrives to claim her son’s body. There are the same sporadic outbursts of extreme violence that have marked all of his films, a score courtesy of Drive’s wunderkind Cliff Martinez, and a surreal, otherworldly veneer bathing every frame in almost accusatory red hues. On paper, this looks like a classic. So how is it that Winding Refn, a filmmaker whose work so often verges on the extraordinary, managed to make of it a very ordinary film?
In many ways, criticising the director for this seems unjust. The film should be taken on its own merits and not just as an example of his style. However, Only God Forgives is problematic in its own right even before one considers its maker’s reputation. It has all the hallmarks of a film designed to be alienating but when one gets down to it, it’s as predictable as any other pseudo-revenge film you’ve seen. There is no greater mystery or insidiousness to the plot – it is one-note and self-contained and the characters follow an easily foreseeable course of action. Even the brutal violence so derided by the reviewing masses is nowhere near as severe as you might expect. The photographic tones of red, white, and black look beautiful but they’re far too obviously chosen for the events they mirror. There is a faintly illusory quality to the film that suggests it’s to be taken as fantastical or dreamlike, but even this doesn’t afford it the haunting allure we’ve come to associate with Winding Refn’s films.
The problem may be that the film evokes a visceral, brutalised, and utterly believable world but peoples it with very familiar characters. Julian finds himself on a collision course with a ruthless cop named Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), whose personal brand of honour and justice is the catalyst for an escalating series of revenge killings. Chang is by far the most interesting character in the piece and Pansringarm is terrific, but the hints of back story reveal a tender figure with one very particular motive (and another very obvious, unspoken one) for cleaning up the streets. Julian’s mother Crystal (a towering Kristin Scott Thomas) is a vicious matriarch who verbally abuses her son into submission, demeaning him in public and comparing him unfavourably with his dead brother. There are hints at an oedipal attachment between the two that shouldn’t seem so predictable, yet it underlines his lack of social engagement and emotionless behaviour. In short, it’s too easy to deduce why these figures are the way that they are. They aren’t afforded the manic turbulence of Bronson or the redemptive love story of the driver. They are tropes – albeit much more bloodied ones – used to play out a saga you’ve watched a thousand times, and their lack of nuance means there’s no resonance to subvert all the bloodshed. Only God Forgives humanises its characters but never makes them interesting, and for this reason the film tends to lack suspense and intrigue.
Although the film’s characters are disappointing, the performances invigorating them cannot be faulted. That Julian is memorable at all is more down to Gosling than anything in the script (which affords him roughly ten lines throughout). Gosling has the authority and magnetic screen presence needed to ground the entire affair, conveying fleeting glimpses of hurt in his eyes and stoic stance. Scott Thomas is stunning in a role far removed from the aristocratic types she usually inhabits. Her Crystal is a merciless and bloodthirsty figure who fills the entire screen with hatred and malice. As the two conspicuous outsiders in a dark and twisted world, these two stand painfully apart not just for their sadistic excuse of a mother/child relationship but also the fractured spectacle of humanity they represent. Against them, the police stand together as a loyal and cohesive unit, capable and determined and ever more eager to undermine their monstrous activities. Julian and Crystal are a damaged and damaging force with no real comprehension of what it is they’re doing. The power of Gosling and Scott Thomas’s performances is matched only by the crushing force with which they fall – observed by the grim Pansringarm, who remains aloof even in his triumph.
There’s a longer, more cerebral essay in me about Only God Forgives but this is not the right place to write it. I’ve probably been unduly harsh on it, but I feel it speaks to the reputation of the director and stars that we’re wont to expect something better. Winding Refn’s films aren’t so much movies as events, so thoroughly and stunningly distinctive that it’s hard to imagine anyone else dreaming up something so surreal and sublime. Arresting as it is, Only God Forgives is like a recycled monologue when what you needed was a twist.
Score: C
Review written by: Grace Duffy
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