Only God Forgives

Started by HeywoodRFloyd, January 06, 2013, 12:06:54 AM

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Pubrick

under the paving stones.

Garam

'Only God Forgives' is up there with 'There Will Be Blood' and 'Enter the Void' for 'most ball-bustingly awesome and instantly iconic title for a 21st century film'. I'm up and down with Refn's stuff, but you have to admire someone who chooses such a brilliant title. Epic and opaque, you know you're gonna get something BIG but aside from that, it tells you nothing. Ace.

BB


MacGuffin

Interview: Nicolas Winding Refn Compares 'Only God Forgives' To A Rembrandt, Responds To Critics & More
INTERVIEWS BY JESSICA KIANG; The Playlist

There was undoubtedly no film that caused quite the same disproportionate signal-to-noise ratio last week as "Only God Forgives," Nicolas Winding Refn's return to Cannes after winning Best Director in 2011 for "Drive." While to us the extremely polarized reaction felt more to do with the perils of unrealistic expectations ("Drive" was a left-field surprise to many in a way that "Only God Forgives" could simply never have been, given Refn's different profile this time out), there was a difference of opinion among attending Playlisters about the film, though not one separated by such a wide gulf as elsewhere.

With the hubbub of delight/outrage still ringing in our ears, we got to take a few minutes to talk with Refn, the hero/villain of the hour, depending on which side you cleave to, this past weekend, and found the filmmaker on typically outspoken, occasionally loquacious, occasionally abrupt form as he talked about his reaction to the critical response and even dropped a few tantalizing morsels about what's coming up next.


"The irony is that the people that are trying to fight it and criticize it, are criticizing it for the exact same thing they criticized 'Drive' for!" How do you feel the heightened expectations since "Drive," especially here in Cannes, have affected the response to "Only God Forgives"?
I don't think it has affected it. For me, the greatest pleasure is when you make something and everyone argues about it. Because you know it's the only time that people are actually affected by what they see. So I've apparently made a film that people either love it or they hate it. So obviously I've reached into your deepest soul [in a move alarmingly reminiscent of a pivotal moment in the film, Refn here leans forward abruptly and points at your intrepid writer's gut area] and planted something, or else you wouldn't love it or hate it. And that's going to stay with you for a very very long time... so that is all you can wish for.
The irony is that the people that are trying to fight it and criticize it, are criticizing it for the exact same thing they criticized "Drive" for! For some reason they just forgot that. So...history repeats itself and everybody forgets!

Is it the violence in the movie that has seemed to attract the most criticism?
It's hard to say...sometimes people argue about the strangest things. They tend to spend a lot of time on [the violence] and then I think God, you spend so much time on an issue that the film actually has very little of, compared to even television, I must be really really good at what I do! So again, thank you very much.

A colleague has a read on the film in that it's about an attempt to end the cycle of violence that is the legacy of this one particular family. Does that sound right to you?
It's definitely very accurate -- but it's also about that. It's very important it's also about that.

And so what else would you consider it to be also?
Well, what do you think?

I suppose I concentrated more on the God and the Devil aspect...
That's also true! No no, because the film is designed like that, like going to a museum and watching a painting, a Rembrandt, you're going to see a thousand different elements within a single frame. Filmmaking is not about what we see it's a very misconceived notion, it's about what we don't see.

Well, that's an interesting idea because there's a lot we don't see and lot we don't hear and lot that's not explained in "Only God Forgives."
Exactly. It's the same thing. Storytelling is not about what we explain it's about what we don't explain. Sound is not about what we hear but about what we don't hear. Because that's the only way for you to interact with it, or else you become passive.

But how do you gauge the balance there, and give the audience just enough to work with?
I can only go off my own needs and wants. All my films represent my own needs and wants.

Which of your films does "Only God Forgives" feel most akin to?
"Valhalla Rising," "Drive" and "Only God Forgives" are very similar in their structure and in their character...

You dedicate the film to Jodorowsky, who is all over this festival [his own film "Dance of Reality" showed here, as well as a documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune"]. Do you know his reaction?
Yes, he came to the red carpet [premiere] with me and he was very moved.

Moved by the dedication or the film?
I believe both -- he was speechless.

"The film is designed like that, like going to a museum and watching a painting, a Rembrandt, you're going to see a thousand different elements within a single frame." The soundtrack to the film is such a huge and distinctive part, tell us about working with Cliff Martinez.
Well, here we had a lot more time to work together and I really enjoy his approach and his music and I'd like to see him very much a part of my future projects. [This time] I brought him in at script stage, also because I needed help with the [Thai karaoke songs that punctuate the narrative] and he knew a lot about that.

And as for upcoming projects, we're very excited about "I Walk With The Dead" with Carey Mulligan?
Yes, that's in the drawing boards, it's looking very good.

And we've heard it variously described as a sexy thriller, a horror movie, an all-female film...
All of the above!

So a sexy thriller horror movie with an all female cast?
Exactly.

And Carey Mulligan is still attached?
[Refn nods mysteriously, but when we point out that he's nodding, he obligingly says into our voice recorder] I'm nodding, I'm nodding.

Any idea when it might shoot?
I have to finish the script first.

We had heard there was already some funding in place...
[Deliberately coy] There are... movements of events.

There's also been talk of you and Gosling doing a comedy together, with Albert Brooks being sought to script?
It's also on the drawing board. We've tried to persuade [Brooks], we can't get him to do it, we've gotta find somebody else. Until he finally agrees to do it.

And your "Barbarella" TV show?
Now I'm writing, hopefully it will shoot early next year?

And how about casting the lead?
I'm attracted to the thought of an unknown.

Have you decided on the aesthetic you'll use?
Hmm [laughs] a lot of sex and violence. Fetishized sex and violence.

There's also "Button Man" - is that still happening?
I'm supposed to read a script...

"Drive" writer James Sallis has written a sequel "Driven" for which the movie is said to be in the pipeline. Have you been approached about that at all?
No. It's never gonna happen. The movie's not gonna get made, because they don't have the key elements.

The key elements being you and Gosling?
Yes.

And Gosling wouldn't think of doing it without you?
I haven't even thought about that, I mean...

But if it were to go ahead, what would your advice be to the filmmakers?
Don't do it! Don't do it. Well, what would they do?

Our precious few minutes up, just before Refn leaves he does mention one other project in response to a question about whether he'd like to further explore Asian culture, by which he was evidently fascinated in "Only God Forgives." "I'm doing a movie in Tokyo," he said, but then went on to state that this was not "I Walk With The Dead," which was for a time rumored to be shooting there. He denied he could let slip any further details, before teasing with "Tok-y-o. I'd love to do a yakuza movie..." Make of that what you will.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


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Kellen



wilder


MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

wilder

LAFF Q & A: 'Only God Forgives' Director Winding Refn on Drugs, Gosling's Hands and Scott Thomas' "Bitch Switch"
via Indiewire

Cannes may not have been the ideal place to debut "Only God Forgives" which was met with hesitant applause there last May. But Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn's batshit, balls-to-the-walls Bangkok-set followup to 2011's "Drive" deserves closer consideration. Clearly, this far less accessible film won't be everyone's thing when RADiUS/TWC opens the film stateside July 19.

Before the film started, Winding Refn told us that while "Drive" was like "doing cocaine all night," "Only God Forgives" is more of "an old school acid trip." But this film -- nocturnal, deathly quiet and far more sinister -- is also a more sleepy psychotropic experience. It's David Lynch goes to Thailand to direct a spaghetti western on quaaludes.

Rather than the neon-soaked LA streets of "Drive," this time Winding Refn's milieu is the criminal underbelly of Bangkok, dressed in red and black. Ryan Gosling gives a somnambulant performance -- for better and for worse -- as Julian, a drug-dealer with an Oedipal streak and plenty of anger issues along with the mommy ones. When his brother is killed during a botched prostitute transaction, their blonde, feisty, perpetually cigarette-wielding mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas, in a performance that will no doubt pick up a few awards come fall) shows up in Thailand to exact revenge. Or, rather, to sick her lost puppy of a son Julian on whoever did this.

Julian endures some literal beatings in Winding Refn's slick, languorous tableaux but moreover he must suffer the barrage of emotional punches levied upon him by Crystal as she beats him into submission. Winding Refn's sparse screenplay, in which Gosling says only a few words, lays the incestuous undertones front and center in a film that emphasizes sensation rather than sense. What follows is a tightly edited exercise in extreme violence and ennui, with a revenge plan that goes as out of control as one in any Coen Brothers' film. It's one of the best films of the year.

In a Q & A moderated by LAFF artistic director and former Newsweek film critic David Ansen, the articulate provocateur opened up about "Only God Forgives," first and foremost reiterating his comment from Cannes that he is a "pornographer."

"I make films about what arouses me at different times. I loved the idea of doing a mother and son story set in a fairytale construction, with a narrative that is all about seeing and feeling and in a way you have to fill in the blanks," Winding Refn said. "Art is most satisfying when it's a two-way process. It has to penetrate you and you have to throw it back to a give-and-take, or else it becomes one-way."

Ansen iterated some of the influences and comparisons that ran through the film. Clearly, Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad" is acutely felt in "Only God Forgives," not only due to composer Cliff Martinez's pulsing organ motif -- in a score that is equal parts electro minimalism and synthy, Badalamentian melodrama -- but because the characters move as if they are "asleep," as Winding Refn said. He used the mythology of the sleepwalker, "condemned to a sense of Dante's Inferno," to construct Julian.

"Because the film has so little verbal explanation, which is one of the tools we're used to now in cinema and television to guide us, when you remove that element it's a very interesting landscape because you're forced to tell the story through sound, music and images," Winding Refn revealed. Considering that the director is colorblind, it's a wonder that he is able to conjure such colorful cinema.



Of all the characters onscreen, Kristin Scott Thomas has the most dialogue, and it's usually nasty. "I'm afraid of seeing her again. She has no problem turning on the bitch switch," Winding Refn admitted. "I was casting unknown actresses out of the UK, but then Kristin Scott Thomas read the script. We talked a lot about Lady Macbeth and those classical approaches to her character."

She wanted to do a transformation for Crystal, so a few days after meeting Winding Refn she sent him a picture of her in a long blonde wig. "It was Donatella Versace here we come," Winding Refn said. KST, as she is known colloquially onset, does a lot of mouthing-off in the film. At dinner, she calls Julian's date a "cumdumpster," a word that Refn picked up from Gosling when he asked for a list of the most demeaning sexist epithets to woman in America.

Another leitmotif is an image of Julian's hands, with literal and metaphorical blood on them, opening and closing. Several characters in the film have their arms and hands severed off by sword. Winding Refn's idea for "Only God Forgives" began with this kernel of an idea: a fist opening and closing. When the fist is closed, "it's an extension of the erection, and when you open up it becomes very feminine. I wanted to make a movie where the hand has to be amputated, and Ryan has great hands," Winding Refn said.

According to Winding Refn, the crew had seven nights to shoot in Bangkok: "This is very tough because of the heat. A lot of locations were sex clubs. Once you turn off the air conditioning, the smell of human 'pleasure' is quite intoxicating. I like being a stranger in a strange land. I live a mundane life in Copenhagen."

The film is dedicated to "Holy Mountain" director Alejandro Jodorowsky. I don't recall such an unusual and oddly befitting homage since Lars von Trier gifted "Antichrist" to Andrei Tarkovsky in 2009 (in each case, the audience snickered at the dedication). "I find that 'El Topo' really created modern pop cinema," Winding Refn said. "His inspiration has become invisible. He's almost 90 and I wanted to say goodbye. Because he's going to die."

wilder


Cloudy

These posters are fucking great.

MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

wilder


HeywoodRFloyd


Pubrick

the better the trailers get, the more i dread how shit the movie is gonna be.

it's like climbing more and more floors in a burning building knowing that eventually you're going to have to jump.

my only hope is it will be so boring i'll be asleep before i hit the ground.
under the paving stones.