Nicolas Winding Refn On Forgiving Only God Forgives

The catalogue of sins ascribed to Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest film is enough to make even a modern-day gore aficionado and genre-junkie like Quentin Tarantino blush: misogyny, racism, gratuitous violence, and the worst crime of all: boringness. The same cannot be said for the reviews. They are deliciously nasty.

Speaking to me last week about reactions to the film, Refn seemed genuinely curious. As in most interviews I’ve read, he starts by asking me my first reaction to the film: “There’s definitely a different appeal, aesthetically, from country to country – and what an audience reads into the film, and how they interpret it,” he says. “And then there’s very much – you can almost divide the movie into a first reaction and the post reaction. That’s very interesting to see, how alternate things suddenly become. … Experiencing the film and coming out [of the film] – that’s two different reactions. And then some time goes by, and there comes what I call the ‘post reaction’ – whether you love it or hate it, the film just continues to indulge [sic] within you. The polarisation [of opinion]; that defines penetration in a way. People can love you or hate you for the exact same reasons – that you means you have touched within them very deep.”

Refn is no stranger to controversy, and is unfazed by the negative press. “It’s always been like that; the same thing with Drive, or the other movies I’ve made. Drive had its share of people who hated it, believe me, and they weren’t afraid of voicing it.”

Okay, but not like this.

What They’re Saying

David Stratton, At The Movies: “A meretricious film which is characterised by some of the most sadistic violence it’s ever been my misfortune to see on screen. Alongside the violence is a pretentious artiness that’s numbingly awful.”

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: “It’s very fetishistic about all those aspects—the martial arts aspects, the Asian aspects, the notion of framing. It’s just a big wank frankly.”

Justin Chang, Variety: “Vapid, nihilistic exercises in style.”

Kong Rithdee, CinemaScope: “Only God Forgives fully exploits those simplistic dualities that appeal to Western writers/filmmakers who shallowly dive into the riddle of Southeast Asia: mysticism vs. carnality, spiritual fatalism vs. aphrodisiacal seduction, “Buddhist” serenity vs. infernal criminality.”

David Edelstein, vulture.com: “[Gosling’s] performance in Only God Forgives (would God forgive that title?) is one long, moist stare, although it’s hard to imagine he can see anything amid the crimson gloom or the rain that raineth.”

Barbara Scharres, rogerebert.com: “I’d be tempted to call Only God Forgives an unintentional laugh-riot if it weren’t so deadly dull… [The film] is driven by the hubris of monumental pretension. Visually, the film is so static that it could be presented as a PowerPoint slide show.”

Manohla Dargis, NYTimes.com: “Mr. Refn is very fond of repeating himself. Again and again, characters walk slowly through long halls decorated with this wallpaper or pose in front of it, waiting for something, anything to happen.”

Yikes.

I Confess…

For all of that, I have to say I like this film. And while I’m in the minority in the media, I’m not the only one. On a gut level, without analysing why as much as articulating how, it pushed my buttons. With meticulous formal control in the direction, lensing by Kubrick collaborator Larry Smith, and a soundtrack by Cliff Martinez, this film is capable (for a certain viewer) of being a sublimely immersive audio-visual experience, and it touches on themes of revenge, sexuality, loyalty and family that have been rightly acknowledged, even by critics, as Jacobean/Shakespearean/Ancient-Greek. It’s primal, it’s cinematic, hallucinatory and nightmarish.

So why do people hate it so much? Not liking a film is one thing, but hating it with this gleeful passion is another. (The only thing everyone agrees on – and likes – is Kristin Scott Thomas’ Queen Bitch turn.)

Is it violent?

Yes – but only in the way that many, many other (excellent) films (Takashi Miike, Park Chan Wook, Quentin Tarantino to name a very few) and TV series (Game of Thrones, Oz, Deadwood) have been equally violent. To be honest, the most disturbing thing I saw on screen this year so far is the plastic surgery scene in Behind the Candelabra. Rewatching Only God Forgives, in light of the claims made about its extreme violence, I found that reviewers were — as happens — imagining things that Refn implies, rather than shows. Refn agrees: “It’s ironic how strong [the reaction to the violence] is compared to how little that actually happens in the film.”

But he’s certainly ready to admit he enjoys the violence.

“There’s a fetish aspect of it that I can’t run from,” he tells me. “But you know, it’s a fetish most people have, very deep within them. We are taught to terminate that part of our psyche, but how can you terminate something that is as important as your sexuality? Even people’s reaction to injustice, or injustice done to other people, can be very violent, emotionally. It embarrasses us, morally – but it’s part of our DNA. [So] it’s healthier sometimes to accept it and almost have it released within you, because it’s there no matter what.

“If we look at ourselves as human beings, our physicality was made for violence behaviour – for survival. So now, over the years, the need of violent behaviour out of necessity kind of disappeared because society met our needs. But the violent urges that came with that, and the instinct to survive, doesn’t just disappear. It’s still part of us. But now we have to find other ways of releasing those impulses. And that’s what art can do. Art is like a way of cleansing our deepest desires, in a way that is healthy.”

Mr Refn, you must be very very healthy.

Is it boring?

I have to call bullshit on people saying it’s all style and no substance: there’s plenty of psychological substance there, it’s just less explicit than, say, Django Unchained or Hamlet. That said, it’s definitely the kind of film where what you get depends on what you bring to it, and how interested you are in the themes/moods being mined. There’s an interesting reading of the film that says it’s about good-vs-bad parenting; another more popular reading is that it’s a castration fantasy. Refn describes it, in the press notes, as “a movie about a man who wants to fight God” and “who is looking for religion to believe in”. He relates this to his own existential angst at the time: “When I was writing the film, I was going through some very existential times in my life – we were expecting our second child and it was a difficult pregnancy.”

Is it misogynist?

Not in my opinion. It has strong women, it has evil women, it has women getting killed, it has men getting killed. It’s not about women being punished, it’s about bad people being punished.

Is it racist?

It’s hard to say. Yes, its ‘hero’ is a Thai cop who exacts Karmic vengeance on bad people – including a lot of white guys — and yes, Julien’s Thai “girlfriend” Mai gets the last laugh. But Kong Rithdee (a Thai cinema expert who also happens to be Thai and whose home town is Bangkok, where the film is set) writes compellingly about an ‘Orientalist’ reductionism at work in the film. Racism is not something that struck me off the bat; the film seems more like an experiment in genre-mashing rather than an attempt to expound on Asian culture.

I put it in the same category as Kill Bill, for example – although Tarantino’s film references were explicit/cult, humorous, and basically up-beat. No less clichéd or reductive, however.

Is that all there is?

There are other reasons this film is getting hated on. Like his fellow Dane Lars Von Trier, Refn has a habit of making provocative statements, such as “I’m a pornographer”. He uses the word in most interviews about this film. When I ask him why he chooses that word, he says, “When you’re a pornographer, you make films about what arouses your desires – your impulses, your fancy.”

Only God Forgives also drew heat by the simple fact of being programmed in competition at Cannes, and after that winning the Sydney Film Festival Prize (which unleashed another shitstorm); for a film like this, that’s like dressing in red and prancing around in a bull pen. The feeling coming out of Cannes was that films of this nature belong in the Midnight Movies sidebar/ghetto, as opposed to polite company/Official Competition.

Part of the problem with Only God Forgives’ may have also been the expectations for the film – not just after the far more commercial Drive, but following the release of its first trailer and second trailer, which make Gosling look like Bruce Willis and the film look like Old Boy. Directors don’t cut trailers though, distributors do; it’s a piece of marketing. Looking at the trailer for Only God Forgives (which I didn’t until recently), it gives no sense of the pace or the passivity – people expecting a sexy, horror-tinged martial arts flick were bound to be disappointed; people expecting Drive had no reason to think any different. (It’s a great trailer, by the way).

But you have to also wonder if the critics aren’t also hating on it because it tranforms the typical protagonist – not to mention a symbol of white male virility and sensitivity, Ryan Gosling – into an almost entirely emasculated/impotent hero: he can’t fuck, he can’t fight, and he can’t stick up for himself. He’s ridden with guilt, and fantasises about a figurative castration (the chopping off of his fists). This aspect of Refn’s film is undoubtedly its most radical – and both uncomfortable and fascinating.

The verdict?

There’s a lot of negative hype about this film. In an ideal world – in my ideal world – you’d go and see it without knowing about any of that, and make up your own mind. As Refn says, “A lot of times people see what they want to see, not necessarily what they feel. And in a way, that’s both good and bad. It can be a very frustrating experience or it can be a very enjoyable experience. But it very much comes down to who you are as a viewer.”

It’s not a crime to like this film – but honestly, people will probably look at you funny, and assume you’re a pretentious arty twot who “likes perving on the fetishistically photographed, glistening blood-covered naked bodies of freshly slain Thai hookers,” as one critic suggested to me when I said I enjoyed the film. But that’s another story.

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Only God Forgives is in national cinemas now.

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Dee Jefferson has been talking and writing about film for over ten years and for various outlets, including ABC 702 and PowerFM in Adelaide, Inside Film, Filmink, Senses Of Cinema,The Brag and Beat Magazine. She is currently the Arts & Culture Editor of Time Out Sydney.