Discuss You Were Never Really Here

The movie wasn't clear.

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Doubtful.

@Kewl_Kat said:

The movie wasn't clear.

Well there's an understatement.

It was totally clear about the level of trauma the two leads had experienced which means the idea that they became a "couple" is just beyond ridiculous.

@MongoLloyd said:

It was totally clear about the level of trauma the two leads had experienced which means the idea that they became a "couple" is just beyond ridiculous.

If you thought the back story of Joe was clear, then I don't know what movie you saw.

What I saw was flashbacks, so short they were nearly subliminal, of the feet of a man with a hammer, a woman hiding under a coffee table, a boy practicing autoerotic asphyxiation with dry cleaning bags, a room or shipping container filled with possibly dead Asian women, barely audible countdowns of numbers, and so on. This is about as clear as a Euro Arthouse movie that has flashes of dead animals intercut into scenes. It's not only unclear, it's a cliche.

Yes, it is trauma. But there is no story attached to it. There is a difference between being clear in the sense of being shown, and clear in the sense of being coherent and intelligible. If someone shouts random words at me, I might well hear him clearly: that doesn't mean his meaning or intention is clear.

I never said anything about a "back story," I said "the level of trauma." It was very clear that they were two very damaged individuals. Period.

@MongoLloyd said:

I never said anything about a "back story," I said "the level of trauma." It was very clear that they were two very damaged individuals. Period.

If the trauma doesn't belong to the characters and is therefore part of their story, who does it belong to and why is it there?

There's more than a suggestion in the story that Joe and Nina are actually enjoying this stuff and I think that might be what motivated the OP.

If you step back from the legerdemain of the flashbacks we don't actually see any trauma inflicted on Joe and Nina. Every single act of violence or trauma is either inflicted by these characters or is a direct result of their deliberate choices. We can only get to the idea that these two people are victims by importing a narrative from tropes provided by other movies. (Usually involving Gibson or Neeson.) Objectively, those flashbacks create a false narrative. It is misdirection. If you arrived at the idea Joe and Nina are victims, and you are probably not alone, you couldn't have gotten there based on what you were told by this movie.

Of course the idea that a teenage girl is actually manipulating her father and the Governor, and that her rescuer is actually a sexual fetishist who gets off on killing people with hammers and asphyxiating himself with plastic bags, and that the two might end up as some kind of Bonnie and Clyde, isn't something one is going to put out in public without at least the pretense of an alternative narrative. But I have no doubt the perverts at Cannes knew what they were seeing when they gave it a standing ovation.

And yes, they are 'two very damaged individuals'. But nothing we are told or shown comes close to explaining that. For all we know they could have been born that way.

If you want to detail the trauma experienced by Joe and Nina feel free to correct me. I suspect that far from finding this to be 'clear', you will struggle to find anything at all.

Perhaps you could explain the scene where Joe 'buries' his mother in the lake (tbh I have doubts it is his mother), and she is replaced by a vision of Nina swimming upwards towards him. Simultaneously the countdown (to orgasm?) occurs. Is it arthouse BS? A transfer of Idee fixe? Some kind of representation of sexual surrogacy? What is Ramsay telling us here?

@Jacinto Cupboard said:

@MongoLloyd said:

I never said anything about a "back story," I said "the level of trauma." It was very clear that they were two very damaged individuals. Period.

If the trauma doesn't belong to the characters and is therefore part of their story, who does it belong to and why is it there?

There's more than a suggestion in the story that Joe and Nina are actually enjoying this stuff and I think that might be what motivated the OP.

If you step back from the legerdemain of the flashbacks we don't actually see any trauma inflicted on Joe and Nina. Every single act of violence or trauma is either inflicted by these characters or is a direct result of their deliberate choices. We can only get to the idea that these two people are victims by importing a narrative from tropes provided by other movies. (Usually involving Gibson or Neeson.) Objectively, those flashbacks create a false narrative. It is misdirection. If you arrived at the idea Joe and Nina are victims, and you are probably not alone, you couldn't have gotten there based on what you were told by this movie.

Of course the idea that a teenage girl is actually manipulating her father and the Governor, and that her rescuer is actually a sexual fetishist who gets off on killing people with hammers and asphyxiating himself with plastic bags, and that the two might end up as some kind of Bonnie and Clyde, isn't something one is going to put out in public without at least the pretense of an alternative narrative. But I have no doubt the perverts at Cannes knew what they were seeing when they gave it a standing ovation.

And yes, they are 'two very damaged individuals'. But nothing we are told or shown comes close to explaining that. For all we know they could have been born that way.

If you want to detail the trauma experienced by Joe and Nina feel free to correct me. I suspect that far from finding this to be 'clear', you will struggle to find anything at all.

Perhaps you could explain the scene where Joe 'buries' his mother in the lake (tbh I have doubts it is his mother), and she is replaced by a vision of Nina swimming upwards towards him. Simultaneously the countdown (to orgasm?) occurs. Is it arthouse BS? A transfer of Idee fixe? Some kind of representation of sexual surrogacy? What is Ramsay telling us here?

A few thoughts here: the fact that you and the OP can invent an alternative plotline is indicitive of the nonsensical abstraction of this film. That said, I think your imagination(s) are running away with you (both). So here's some 'backstory' we get about the 'trama' of Joe:

  • Joe's dad was a US Marine (shown by the Dress Uniform bagged in the closet which Young Joe sticks his head in to drown out the sound of his parents arguing/fighting)
  • Joe carried the same scars as a child (back of his arms/legs/back) showing a rod or switch had been used to punish him
  • Joe's dad can be heard telling him to "Stand up straight! Only pussies and girls slouch!" and "Do better! Say it!! Tell me you will do better!!" Young Joe says "I'll do better."
  • Over time it is revealed that a ballpeen hammer is what Joe's dad had hit Joe's mom with, which explains Joe's odd weapon of choice to "inflict suffering"
  • Joe's boss says Nina began to run away after her mother committed suicide...I would speculate that is the time that she began being abused, hence the repeated running away
  • Nina's dad is clearly distraught over his daughter's assumed abuse, and his parental neglect that made her vulnerable (I think he was a suicide, but could see the argument for a news plant)
  • Nina and Joe share a similar coping mechanism of silently or quietly counting backwards in the hope that the abuse could be avoided or ignored
  • the elderly woman was Joe's mom (shown by the old colorized photo of her husband in that same Marine Dress Uniform next to a period-correct picture of her matching the woman under the coffee table)
  • as to the scene where Joe buries his mom: he had intended to kill himself, but as he saw her drift deep, he saw Nina would die too...hence he unloaded the stones and her hope for life/rescue rose with him (in his mind)

Actually I'm doing the opposite of inventing alternative plot lines. I am pointing out how one can take an implication or suggestion and take it to some strange places. Which I think you do with your list btw.

This story is an example of an unreliable narrator. So unreliable in fact we at times don't even know who or what the narrator is. I am even open to the idea that some of these confusing aspects might not even be deliberate: they could be no more than the result of writing/directing/editing incompetence. The point is the narration is SO unreliable, any attempts to make sense of it by joining the dots cannot result in a confident explanation.

This is not a rational story. Trying to impose a rational narrative contradicts the very nature of the movie. I think we can agree that Joe is some kind of madman. I think we can also agree that some of the things we see and hear, assumedly from his memory or standpoint, cannot have happened.

We can't look at a memories (and we cannot even be sure they are memories) that we cannot be confident are true, and then argue that they contain incidental information (of the sort you describe) that we can rely on. That is cognitively untenable. It rests on a premise that the narrator is confused about the things in focus but is nonetheless faithful in the presentation of background information.

Then please make the case for an unreliable narrator, as I saw no evidence of such. To watch an entire film, and assume that because you can't put it together that it must be an unreliable narrator, seems an error of category. I was simply responding to your statement: "If you want to detail the trauma experienced by Joe and Nina feel free to correct me. I suspect that far from finding this to be 'clear', you will struggle to find anything at all." I'd say my list does a decent job of that.

There is a difference between something that it is possible to infer, and something that is a necessary inference.

You might think inferences you have made are reasonable. I might even agree with you. But in this story they are not the only inferences that can be made. In the absence of compelling reasons to accept a particular explanation we have to accept that ambiguity.

For whatever reason this movie withholds information that would allow us to come to conclusions about key aspects of the narrative. I honestly don't know if this is artful or artless. Regardless, this movie flirts with the idea of madness and truth. Implausible and sometimes impossible things abound. Things that look like clues might be the truth or they might be delusion.

As for unreliable narration there are two key scenes we can fix as absolutely false. The 'burial' of his mother, and the suicide scene. These things categorically cannot have happened as shown. So we know that there are fantasy elements in this story: the problem is we cannot know what is real or and what is delusion. It is, after all, a tale told by a madman.

@mechajutaro said:

Did Joe & Nina become a couple in the end?

No, it turned out that nearly everything we'd seen had been going on in Joe's imagination

I couldn't rule it out, tho I suspect you are being facetious.

The title of the story might be a clue, but then again, it too can be read multiple ways.

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