Allow me to be a giant douche for a moment : the critic you've read about ONLY GOD FORGIVES is probably wrong. It was most likely written by a bitter, childish and intellectually lazy journalist who believes he has the monopoly of artistic taste. Whenever an artist does something truly great (i.e. DRIVE), everybody expects him to milk the same idea for the rest of their career. That is not how art works. ONLY GOD FORGIVES is a very good movie. It's also a difficult movie. More introspective, contemplative and lot less transparent than DRIVE. You can't enjoy it if you're not ready to work, but unlike previous Nicolas Winding Refn pieces, ONLY GOD FORGIVES works with you and not against you.
Julian (Ryan Gosling) and Billy (Tom Burke) are brothers running a Muay Thai gym in Thailand and dealing dope for their mother (Kristin Scott Thomas), seemingly because it's easier to do it there than in America. Billy, the dominant, violent one, rapes and kills a sixteen years old girl on a drunken binge and suffers too a horrible fate to the hands of Chang (Vithaya Pansingarm), a ruthless local policeman with his own set of ethics. Julian's mom expects him to avenge his brother, but things are not that simple to him. He wants to distance himself of the violence he grew up in, but he doesn't know how since it seems to live within him.
Now bear with me. There are patterns that tie ONLY GOD FORGIVES to other Nicolas Winding Refn movies. I believe the lack of words and the occasional clumsiness of the screenplay were not incidental. It's not the first time Refn is trying to tell a story with images only, but this time it's successful. Every bit of essential narrative information is available each beautiful, studied and slow-moving frames of ONLY GOD FORGIVES. No stones have been left unturned in the visual composition, but the lighting is the one truly exceptional variable. Refn seems to shun words, to deliberately show them contempt by using the bare bones of English only, but it doesn't mean he's not telling the story. ONLY GOD FORGIVES is a unique visual experience that blends aesthetic and narrative into one object.
Mouth pulling as a metaphor.
My main quarrel with ONLY GOD FORGIVES is the actors' direction. It was obvious to a point it was detrimental to the movie. Julian and Chang, walking around like they were under hypnosis had for goal to have them tie the frames together, like a metaphorical finger reading a graphic novel, but I thought the result was clumsy. Kristin Scott Thomas is the only cast member really acting in there and it makes her stand out even if she's not the best talent. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a movie conceptually similar to ONLY GOD FORGIVES, as it also dealt with words as a problem, but the Coen brothers distanced themselves and made something trult remarkable by giving their actors almost total freedom within the frame. Nicolas Winding Refn direct his actors way too tightly to have an amazing, delirious scene like this in ONLY GOD FORGIVES (OK, maybe Cormac McCarthy had something to do with it, too)
About that ultra-violence. It was a pretty violent movie indeed, but I do believe it was all part of Refn's tell-a-story-with-little-to-no-words concept. Physical violence is something extremely visual and for some characters (namely Chang), it's the only language they speak. Apparently, ONLY GOD FORGIVES was a gift to Alejandro Jodorowsky, but I saw little of his influence through it, except maybe for a certain scene involving needles (scene that contains a wink to Luis Bunuel also). The clearer influence here is french madman Gaspar Noé *. But even then, much of ONLY GOD FORGIVES is Refn's and Refn's alone. The more experience he gains, the more Refn develops a vision of cinema he completely owns.
Don't expect talking. Don't expect to be spoon fed. ONLY GOD FORGIVES is very old-school, new wave cinema in that regards. It's not a movie you can afford to be passive with. It will solicitate your intellect and your ability to appreciate art. The worst mistake you could make walking into it is to expect DRIVE all over again. Great artists know their successes need to be left alone and know when to move to another paradigm. On a long enough time scale, a movie like ONLY GOD FORGIVES will define Nicolas Winding Refn's legacy, his ability to change direction, to gleefully experiment, and the whiny critics who expected DRIVE 2 will all be forgotten.
* Did you know I have seen IRREVERSIBLE in theater at a festival? It was both distressing and hilarious. Distressing because you know...horrible twenty minutes rape scene...and hilarious because of the high-minded ''cinema people'' leaving te theater in tears.
