"You Were Never Really Here" by Lynne Ramsay. An outstanding but unfinished scene in which Joaquin Phoenix plays the sad killer

You will most likely never see this amazing film. For a simple reason: an incomplete version of it was brought to Cannes. When the picture is finished and gets to hire, it will become completely different. Alternatively, not really, who knows. For example, "You Were Never Really Here" should last, according to the festival catalog, a little more than an hour and a half, but on the eightieth minute the film suddenly stopped. There were no final credits at all - they were replaced by music on a black background. Music, I must say, beautiful. Almost the entire hall remained to listen to it to the end.

Tartan Lynne Ramsay is a director with a strange fate. Her first short films caused a storm of enthusiasm and brought several awards in Cannes. Full-length films immediately became the subject of adoration for many, but others were abruptly pushed away by a specific style: Ramsay does not like to explain anything, the whole meaning of her paintings is hidden in a whimsical pictorial series. "Ratcatcher", "Morvern Callar" and "We Need to Talk About Kevin" are considered cult today. At the same time, at least two ambitious projects of the director were not brought to the end - other authors finished them: talking about the thriller "The Lovely Bones" and the western "Jane Got a Gun". In recent years, there have been rumors that Ramsay has taken on an unexpected modern version of "Moby Dick". In fact, it turned out that she was working on this picture - "You Were Never Really Here" according to the novel by the American Jonathan Ames.

However, there could be no book. After all, the plot of the film, if you retell it, causes only bewilderment - such a typical action movie with Jason Statham (if it happened twenty years ago, instead of it there would be an imaginary Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal). The main character is a hired killer named Joe, a veteran of one of the Middle Eastern wars. He wanders around the megalopolis, observing the strictest incognito, and performs tasks that correspond to his internal code of honor: he is a good man, he lives with an old mother and does not like the soul. One day, Joe receives an order to rescue the daughter of a politician who was stolen by attackers and placed in a brothel for minors. But pulling a girl out, he finds out that there are powerful people behind the abduction who cannot cope with alone.

Dotted plot does not give an idea about anything. It seems that Ramsay specially used such a banal pattern so as not to think at all about the so-called “storytelling”, the continuation and the final of which the viewer knows in advance. Her film is glued from the atmosphere, condensed into visual images equally mysterious and potent. The wandering silent hero collects the night city - of course, New York - as a colossal puzzle. The angles chosen by the operator Thomas Townend are stranger and stranger; quote, pastiche or a parody of the classics of world cinema in the stopped frames suddenly turn into pure, not muddied subtext poetry. Although all the same between the stitches are read and "Psychosis", and "Taxi Driver", and "Leon", and "Ghost Dog". Nevertheless, Ramsay creates his own scenes worthy of entering the history of cinema. For example, two murderers, one of whom just fired at the other, are lying on the floor - one dies, the other rests. In addition, suddenly, together they begin to sing along to the song that is being played on the radio at that moment, and then join hands.

Sound design is generally sophisticated and complex. Selected soundtrack works on the effect of counterpoint - funny retro hits are included in the toughest moments. However, the melodic and ambiguous original music of Jonny Greenwood (today it is almost ridiculous to certify him as a “Radiohead guitarist”), one of the best film composers of our time, literally hypnotizes (it sounds on the credits at the end). The rhythm of the film then slows down, as if the authors have forgotten that the hero needs to hurry, then epileptically speeds up. And it seems that the most important thing is killing, shooting, chasing, with annoying but amusing stability, is out of sight of the camera.

It is no exaggeration to say that the soul and heart of the picture, thanks to which it does not degenerate into a formalist experiment, is Joaquin Phoenix, who played the role of Joe. He recovered, became stronger, overgrown with a shaggy beard; unwashed matted hair gathered in a ponytail. Only one eyes remained on the face - and their gaze would not be forgotten for a long time. Phoenix here is the epitome of film genesis, as in "Two Lovers" by James Gray or "The Master" by Paul Thomas Anderson. The role is also impressive due to the fact that the hero of an action film does almost no action at all - he constantly falls asleep on the move, disconnects from reality, turning the world around him into a kind of surrealistic dream. A girl named Nina, played by an actress, apparently of Russian origin Ekaterina Samsonov, is also a miracle as good.