Forgotten Films: Only God Forgives

There are several films from the past few years that I think did not get enough attention or discussion. I’ll aid in ending this unfortunate reality by starting a series of posts called Forgotten Films. First is Only God Forgives by Nicolas Winding Refn, my favorite film of 2013. (Spoilers for the entire film ahead)

The Unnatural and Redemption

            Only God Forgives has a reputation. It’s a violently odd and incoherent beast. It presents dark themes native to Shakespeare and Greek myth, but in a post-modern vessel. The film aggresses one’s sensibilities while it pulls no punches. The exposition is confusing, vulgar, and violent. Its rising action is cripplingly slow, leading to a climax that explodes like very few films can yet still manages to subvert expectations. And its falling action does not just drop, it careens straight down, unraveling until you can barely stand to be alienated any longer by the oddness of it all.

            Only God Forgives immediately assaults the viewer with a strange world. It introduces the audience to Julian and his brother Billy. They run a muay thai gym for young men to train and compete as a cover for their drug business. During a trainees’ fight, their lieutenant does a drug deal with a woman. The boy ends up winning, is congratulated, and paid by Billy as Julian blankly stares. The room is dark and foreboding with extreme blood red light accenting it. Billy turns to Julian, uttering, “Time to meet the Devil.”

           

            Billy seeks punishment for his sexual relationship with his mother. During the film’s dinner scene, their mother Crystal says, “You know how boys are. Competitive. And with Billy being older and having the bigger cock, it’s not that Julian’s was small but…Billy’s was enormous!” The audience has their Oedipus. Instead of killing his father (Julian took that into his own hands), or blinding himself, the unnatural act pushes Billy to seek death. But he cannot facilitate death himself. He understands that he has committed a grave sin and his self-hatred pushes him to seek damnation by God, the ultimate authority.

            The film transitions to the neo-noir streets of Bangkok. Dark alleys, bright red and blue neon lights abound as Billy stalks the city. He stops upon a brothel and tells the pimp inside, “I want to fuck a 14 year old girl.” The pimp shrugs off the unnatural request in an attempt to redirect Billy’s attention to the girls in the window. Billy’s neon-lit ephebelia continues. “Do you have a daughter?” The pimp nods. “Bring her in. I’ll pay you 15000 Bat.” The pimp gives up and Billy assaults him and the women inside the brothel. Billy does not want to have sex with a young girl for the pleasure. One look into his and Julian’s face shouts that they are incapable of feeling pleasure, natural or not. The heinous crime he seeks to commit is to bring justice down upon himself. He continues down the streets, ambling like a barbarian waiting for civilization to strike him down.

            Billy smells the arm he beat the women with, taking in their perfume. He stops by a madame and her young daughter, fantasizing of murdering and raping her. A smash cut back to Julian looking at his hands connects the act of sex and violence to human hands. Julian holds them open then tightly closed. His upper torso and closed fists resemble the statue of a younger and more muscular muay thai fighter behind him.

            The film cuts to Chang, walking down the street. Chang’s otherworldliness becomes apparent by his manner of appearing rather than arriving. He enters a room with Billy on a bed and the young girl in a pool of blood on the floor. Billy sits there, no longer blank but withdrawn knowing that judgment has come and Hell will follow.

            The editing during the climactic fight scene reveals the statue near Julian’s ring to be of Chang. The film cuts between shots of Chang mercilessly beating Julian and the statue. Chang was a legendary fighter in addition to his supernatural position. Whereas Billy and Julian use their fists for unnatural acts (killing and raping young women, killing one’s father), Chang has used them to reinforce his dominion and dispense justice. The proximity of Julian to the statue suggests an inverted covenant the two have. Unlike the Binding of Isaac, Chang never asked Julian to kill his father as a test of his devotion. Julian is more like Macbeth than Abraham. The acts of patricide and filicide represent affronts against nature. God makes sin, man then sins, now man must seek redemption. And now the film begins suggesting that Chang is Old Testament. Both Billy and the father of the dead girl must be redeemed.

            Chang brings an old man into the room. He is Choi Yan Lee, the father of the young girl. Chang blankly looks at a saddened Lee and says, “How could you do it? How could you let this happen?” Lee is bewildered, replying, “I didn’t do anything.” Chang stares mercilessly and ends the conversation. “Now’s your chance to do something. Do what you want.” Chang leaves the room and the father brutally murders Billy. God is not seeking murder, but he is allowing it to occur to restore balance to civilization. Nature has purged the unnatural.

            The film cuts to a nighttime shot next to a highway. The police encircle Chang and Lee as low-end brass blares, summoning discomfort and foreshadowing Lee’s redemption. Lee sits on his knees cowering before Chang and begging for his life.

Lee: I’m sorry. My apologies. Don’t kill me.

Chang: What are you sorry for?

L: You were there. You know what I did. He killed my daughter.

C: Why did you kill him?

L: Because he killed my daughter.

C: You knew what your daughter was doing. Why didn’t you stop her?

L: How else was I to make ends meet. I have four daughters and no sons […] don’t you understand?

Chang approaches mightily and unfazed by Lee’s begging, causing Lee to look away in shame. Chang finally states, “This isn’t about your dead daughter. It’s about your three living daughters. This is to make sure you never forget them.” Chang materializes a sword from his back and slices off Lee’s right arm.

            Lee begs and deflects responsibility for what happened to his daughter, but Chang places the blame on Lee as it is his duty as a father to protect them. In order to redeem Lee, Chang slices off his right arm. Responsibility, action, and redemption are all values centered around the hands of the characters. Hands specifically are an important symbol in Refn’s films. They enact sex when open and violence when closed. Thus cutting off an arm is a neutering of power and sexuality while warning the rest of humanity about the wrath of God. The only chance at redemption is through physical justice. Lee now stands as a testament and has been redeemed for allowing his daughter to die. He is right with God and society.

            The next scene begins as Lee’s shrieks fade and Chang’s blade stops ringing. A steel eyed woman walks in. She is Mai, an exotic dancer in a strange relationship with Julian. He sits, blankly looking at her as she ties his hands to a chair. Sorrowful music plays as Julian looks longingly at Mai masturbating on the bed. He wants to engage with her physically but is unable to touch her. Julian murdered his father earlier in life out of jealousy for the father’s and Billy’s relationship with Crystal. Patricide began an Oedipal sin. His transgression against nature pushes him to fear redemption and its high costs, thus he is unable to experience physical pleasure.

            Julian begins to hallucinate, fearfully imagining himself walk down a hall leading to a dark room. He slowly places his arm into the darkness, reaching into the unknown of his subconscious. Chang appears and slices off his arm in the hallucination as the film quickly cuts back to Mai climaxing. Once again, violence, redemption, and sexuality are linked together. But more importantly, unnatural violence and sexuality has made natural sexuality impossible for Julian. The inverted covenant requires Chang to redeem Julian.

            Julian’s unnatural past followed by his final act against his mother of feeling inside the womb of her corpse illustrates his fractured psyche. He is not normal and cannot become normal on his own. His mother’s involvement only brings about revenge plots against Chang when she should be pushing for him to become redeemed. Her existence is that of a towering and incestuous hedonist. She spites Julian when he refuses to kill Choi Yan Lee. She arrogantly seeks the death of Chang. And when her warpath sets Chang’s sights on her, she invokes maternity so that Julian protects her only to later dismiss him as an after thought before her death by Chang’s sword.

            Julian’s exploration of his mother’s womb is fruitless. He returns to a club, watching women from a distance, unable to touch them or to feel peace. Chang enters, looking softer as and full of grace. The ending, alluding to the too-good-to-be-true hallucination at the end of Taxi Driver, finds Julian in a pastoral setting. Nature surrounds him, Chang, and the police encircling them. Julian holds his arms out, bloodied and dirty from killing his father and feeling his mother’s womb. Chang’s mystical sword comes down and the film ends. Julian is no longer unnatural, but he is now physically incapable of sex and violence. He is sterile, but he is redeemed.