Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Screenplay and Best Actor-Joaquin Phoenix
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
Joe is a violent hitman who tracks down missing girls and beats up anyone who has sexually harassed them. Joe is assigned to find a girl named Nina. He finds her, but then he learns it is a set up. People take Nina away and try to kill Joe, but what they don’t know is that they are messing with a pro.
Blaine: Lynne Ramsay likes a piece of material whether it’s a bestselling book or a tiny pulp novel. She just finds something unique about it and has ideas of how she can tell the story and that’s how it was when she read Jonathan Ames’ novel, “You Were Never Really Here". Lynne did several different drafts of the script and she tried to put herself into the mind of the character, Joe, as she was writing the part. Lynne’s cinematographer, Tom Townend, would visit her while she was working on the script and they would prepare themselves for how they would shoot a scene. Before she achieved a career in filmmaking, Lynne Ramsay was a photographer and she still puts her photography skills to good use. She’s always thinking about how the shots should look in her films and she had the film cameras focus on a lot of things when they shot “You Were Never Really Here”. A picture of Joaquin Phoenix popped up on Lynne's computer screen while she was developing the script and after that he was all she could think about to play the character, Joe.
Joaquin Phoenix was busy enough being attached to three other projects, but “You Were Never Really Here” sounded interesting to him while Lynne was telling him what it was about through the phone. “You Were Never Really Here” was the first movie he said yes to without meeting the director in person first. He always likes to meet the director to see if he feels comfortable with them. Joaquin asked Lynne if she could change the shooting schedule, but then one of the movies Joaquin was supposed to do got cancelled and so he was able to fit “You Were Never Really Here” into his schedule. Joaquin had eight weeks to prepare himself for the role before shooting began. He did things that Lynne didn’t ask him to do in order to prepare himself. For one he grew a beard, but it wasn’t for “You Were Never Really Here”. Joaquin was going to be playing Jesus Christ after. Joaquin also did a few weights to build himself up a bit. He just did whatever he felt was necessary to prepare himself for this role. He found the performance by himself and he really surprised Lynne while they were shooting.
Shooting was six weeks away and Lynne and her team had to scout all over New York to find the right spots to shoot the movie. The crew was up for moving around from spot to spot. What was sad for them was production had wrapped. They had enough energy to make another film. “You Were Never Really Here” was given a 29 day shooting schedule and they didn’t have much time to prep for each scene they shot. But Lynne was used to shooting a movie with a tight schedule because she had done it before. Joaquin Phoenix challenged Lynne while making “You Were Never Really Here”. He also had a lot of suggestions on what Joe should do in a scene. He was almost like Lynne’s co-director. They would push themselves to make each take they did look good and that proves how good they wanted this movie to be. They would try different versions of a scene while shooting. Everyday was so exciting for Lynne Ramsay, even though it was intense making this movie and the weather was hot, but still she thought it was an amazing experience.
Joaquin Phoenix’s character Joe is very damaged and he has these scars all over his body. You see flash backs of his childhood and his father was a really terrible person. The scars on Joe’s body are from his father. The father treated Joe and his mother terribly and those memories have been haunting Joe ever since. He must take his anger on the guys he beats up. In the novel, Joe didn’t use a hammer. Lynne felt that people have seen gun violence so many times that it was better to try something new. She felt a hammer was a better way for Joe to show his mark when he is doing business. Joe is a physical guy. He can fight his way out of serious situations like a man pointing a gun at him. Joe also has suicidal thoughts. "You Were Never Really Here” has been called the “Taxi Driver” of 2017 because it’s about a guy saving a young girl. Joe goes to save a girl named Nina, but then he gets set up and they kill the people he does business with and his loving mother, which really upsets him. He takes his mom’s body to a lake, gives her a water burial and tries to drown himself while doing it. Then he has a vision of Nina and realizes she still is in danger.
Joe finds out that the person who set him up was a Governor and the reason he did it was because he likes having intercourse with Nina and Joe’s job is to teach men like him a lesson. So setting him up gets him out of the way. But Joe doesn’t give up. He finds the Governor’s house, fights his way through security, but Nina has already beat him to killing the Governor. She saved herself. Joaquin and Lynne wanted to get away from the idea of the male hero. It would have been better if there was a twist. Joe however is still the man to the rescue for Nina because she needs company. She just slit the guy’s throat and his blood is on her fingers. She needs someone to escort her out of that house. Nina is almost as damaged as Joe, but she is there to help him and I think they look after each other from now on. Lynne Ramsay was able to finish putting “You Were Never Really Here” together just before the 2017 Cannes Film Festival was about to end. It was the last movie to premiere at the festival and was honored with two awards for Lynne’s screenplay and Joaquin Phoenix’s performance.
My rating on “You Were Never Really Here” is five out of five stars
Joaquin Phoenix winning Best Actor at Cannes
Joaquin Phoenix and Lynne Ramsay with their wins at the Cannes Film Festival
