Only God Forgives Movie Review

A fter watching ‘Only God Forgives’ one thing was clear and certain in my head, this movie is sure to create a divide in people’s perceptions of this movie. The majority of people who will see this movie will leave thinking that Only God Forgives is one of the worst movies they have ever seen, creating confusion at every turn and leaving the cinema completely baffled, the small minority of people on the other hand though will feel satisfied that they have just witnessed a beautifully crafted and very unique story that is completely different to anything that is currently out there. I can understand why some will love this film and why the majority won’t.

Only God Forgives is the second time director Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling have teamed up after the 2011 hit Drive. Only God Forgives is a story about revenge. Julian (Ryan Gosling), a drug smuggler in Bangkok finds himself trying to track down the person responsible for his brother’s death when his mother flies in from American. Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) is the person behind Julian’s brother’s death though this is all brought about after Billy (Julian’s brother) kills and rapes a young girl.

That is the clearest way to explain the main backbone of the story without creating confusion. It sounds fairly simple, but believe me it isn’t. Everything in this film requires you to be very analytical and look extremely in depth at what you are seeing on screen in order to know what is going on.

Characters in this movie stand for more than just people in this film. There doesn’t really seem a right side to follow as neither is good. Julian and his mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas) are trying to get revenge for Billy’s death, but is that really justified because Billy did rape and kill a young girl. Chang on the other hand is perceived as this corrupt cop (though he isn’t- I’ll get to that in a bit) and the person responsible for Billy’s death, so you don’t really see him as the good guy of this movie either.

When you see Crystal on screen you never feel like she is a normal person, you first see her arriving at her hotel and she imminently opens her fiery personality on the woman working behind the reception desk. She seeks revenge and nothing else all throughout this movie, she is never nice to anyone on screen other than Julian and even then she sits there caressing her sons arm creating this unnatural relationship between mother and son. The way she speaks to people and her persistence for revenge it’s clear that Refn is trying to portray Crystal as the Devil.

Chang isn’t a police officer but is always looked up to by the police, they all respect him and never question him and everything he does is justified to the people around him merely due to his status. He is untouchable in this movie and can also just pull a sword out of thin air. Chang isn’t a cop, he is a metaphor for God.

None of this is explained to you either so I can understand why people will get confused. No one will go into Only God Forgives expecting that they will have to look this much in depth at this movie and thus leaving you confused, mainly due to the vast majority of movies not leaving you this much in the dark.

Leaving you in the dark is a big problem in this film. Dream like sequences crop up throughout this film adding to the confusion especially when in certain scenes it is only made clear through Julian’s shirt changing colour. This doesn’t bring anything other than confusion. Another area leaving you in the dark is the obsession with Julian’s hands. These shots of his hands and his fists clenched all throughout, such as the scene when he puts his hands under the tap and the water turns to blood. This is eventually explained in the movies closing stages but again it’s an explanation you need to figure out yourself.

You also never attach yourselves to the characters mainly because they are never developed, this could be due to the characters acting as nothing more than metaphors. This isn’t something I’m a fan of, by not attaching yourself to the characters and with all this confusion this film isn’t an easy watch.

As in Drive, Ryan Gosling barley has any dialog in this film, as expected. He does well in this movie with the script he has been given but isn’t really given as much screen time as you’d expect. The stand out is Vithaya Pansringarm, he really is a sinister character in in this movie. You get this vibe of a god like being walking around Bangkok by the way he slowly walks around everywhere, everything he does is precise and elegant, be it with his sword or his fists. One area that I didn’t understand is the karaoke scenes that happen far too often in this film that occur every time Chang dishes out a punishment.

Music is the main strength in this film, it has to be good when dialog is absent for long periods of time. This techno style of music compliments this dark criminal environment extremely well especially in the fight scenes. An element that is also well worked is when characters are mute, it takes place a few times during ‘Only God Forgives’ when characters begin to talk and all you can hear music instead of their dialog. This is a clever idea that shows that who they are talking to isn’t listening and only focused on their thoughts.

Nicolas Winding Refn has approached this movie with the image of creating Only God Forgives as artistic as possible. This movie does look great, dark atmospheres work well to create this criminal environment. Cinematographer is also excellent, long, slow camera panning shots all add to this art. Everything has its place in this artistic image including light that is perfectly worked to only focus on certain objects in scenes, leaving the rest of the set in darkness.

I’m all for a great artistic film with great cinematography and music but this film isn’t great. Drive’s uniqueness still felt like a great movie, you was able to fathom out what was going on despite a lack of dialog from Ryan Gosling. Only God Forgives feels like it’s trying to be too clever. With characters resembling metaphors you find it hard to understand their actions when you aren’t given much detail into their background, and with a story that jumps from seemingly normal situations to bizarre scenes you will easily get confused. This movie is only 90 minutes but it feels a lot longer than many two hour plus films due to the amount of times you will be scratching your head at what’s going on. This isn’t an easy watch and even when you do take the time to analyse ever moment on screen certain scenes still appear completely bizarre and going to far, especially a torture scene and one scene in particular is when Julian cuts open a characters stomach and puts his hand in there, not a single piece of explanation is given to why this happens or what Refn is trying to portray.

Nicolas Winding Refn is a good director with a unique mind, proved perfectly from Drive, but the way he has approached this movie feels like he is trying to create a piece of art or literature with hidden meaning behind ever tiny detail more so than a movie. By all the focus going into you working out what the meaning is the movie sort of shoots its self in the foot by creating confusion. You don’t expect to have to do this in a movie and when you don’t know what is going on you begin losing interest. I can appreciate a film that uses amazing cinematography perfectly complimented with a great score but by no means does that mean it’s a great film. Only God Forgives sadly is just that.

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