You Were Never Really Here (dir. Lynne Ramsay)

Winner of two prestigious awards at this year's Cannes Film Festival (Best Actor and Best Screenplay), Lynne Ramsay's ode to God's lonely man, "You Were Never Really Here" boasts the filmmaking hutzpah of an auteur at the top of her game. Notorious for being prickly to work with, and unwilling to conform to surroundings that don't meet her criteria, Ramsay is a forced to be reckoned with. Her previous efforts, "Ratcatcher" and "We Need To Talk About Kevin" topped many critics year-end lists, and cemented her position as one Britain's most enigmatic storytellers. In her fourth feature, an adaptation of Jonathan Ame's much revered novella of the same name, she once again proves her affinity behind the camera is akin to a painter's bush: effortlessly sketching a impression of a bedraggled and suicidal man searching for his place in the world.

In an engaging opening scene, our anti-hero Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) wraps a paper bag around his head and deliberately attempts to asphyxiate. Does he want pain, or is he seeking to meet his maker? I like to think both, for as much as our central character Joe wants to die - he isn't afraid of getting hurt in the process. During this attempt, a young-boy is close-by, but it soon becomes clear it's his younger-self, with Ramsay flickering between the fantastical and the real on serval occasions, as to remind us of Joe's inner turmoil.

Joe's ghoulish presence in the world is the result of a tumultuous upbringing - seen in momentary flashbacks - with his father using his mother as the parodical punching bag. Add to the mix a painstaking military career, and a brief stint with the FBI where he saw all manor of terrors, he's lived a life more akin to a waking nightmare, and his hellish past hangs over him like the proverbial albatross across his neck.

Joe gave up a long time ago, and seemingly exists to serve others. He specializes in returning lost girls; some which have run away from home, back to their parents, saving them from a life of sexual enslavement. Scouring the seedy underbelly of New York's underage sex market, his latest case involves that of young runaway Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), the daughter of a well-connected Governor's aide, whose whereabouts have been linked to a up-market prostitution ring. Joe wastes no time in getting to work, arming himself with his preferred weapon of choice, a ball-point hammer (also his fathers favorite method of destruction) and a death-wish style form of vigilante justice.

Perhaps the closest comparison to Ramsay's thriller is Scorsese's "Taxi Driver", in it's central characters motive as the de-facto savior to young girls. Though they follow similar maxims, Ramsay's and Ame's collaboration is anything but derivative. With an abundance of style and many moments of ponderous beauty, from it's landscapes to the anguish with which Ramsay dedicates to her lead actor, this is a revenge thriller with a distinctive edginess. Furthermore, while "Taxi Driver's" Travis Bickle was a keen talker, Joe is a man of few words - and he likes his privacy. In one deliciously nervous scene, he berates a fellow business associate as to why his son was snooping on him, during one of his weekly visits to his mother (played by Judith Roberts) - he severs the relationship, for fear of retaliation but mostly due to his obsession with his own solitude.

But this is far from a downbeat melodrama, as the moment things start going south for Joe, after the seemingly straight-forward snatch-and-grab plan goes horrible awry, the action lights a fire under the plot. And when the on-screen violence gets going, it's nihilistic and unforgiving in it's nastiness, and distinctly not for the faint of heart. Credit to Ramsay and co for keeping the violence contained to mere suggestion for large parts, but when necessary blending exhilarating moments of misanthropic horror with equal measure of stylistic beauty.

Furthermore, the accompanying score from Johnny Greenwood is also of note; a evocative no-holds barred melange of piercing techno with a cacophonous drum-beat that wholly enriches the mephitic violence on screen. On a performance level, Phoenix is dutifully superb, and is worthy of his Best Actor award from Cannes; managing to evoke the failed existence of an overweight, depressed and vengeful anti-hero. His return to the acting ring from his brief fellowship with prankster-ism in the 2010 mokumentary "I'm Still Here" has been met with increasingly superlative efforts (Her, Inherent Vice, Mary Magdalene) and a dedication to his craft which was perhaps missing before.

But if anyone is the star of this unforgiving masterpiece, it's our director Lynne Ramsay. Through her delicate use of the camera, which is able to create so much profanity in the slightest of details, to her impeccable scriptwriting, there's seemingly nothing she can't do. In "You Were Never Really Here", the Scottish-born director adopts a restrained approach to her storytelling here, though there's no doubting it's authenticity and wildly imaginative narration. Anchoring the piece is the gorgeous cinematography by Thomas Towend, which paints the scenery in such a away that despite the films depressive edge, the aesthetic is never anything less than vivacious and inherently mesmeric. "You Were Never Really Here" is a special film, from a special filmmaker, one with whom the rigmarole of studio interference isn't an issue, and one who has created a revenge thriller that will live with you long after you see it.

Rating 5/5.