Only God Forgives

Thud, crack. That’s the sound of knuck­le split­ting flesh. Specif­i­cal­ly Ryan Gosling’s, whose A‑list mug is beat­en to a swollen, seep­ing pulp by Vithaya Pansringarm’s metaphor­i­cal Angel of Vengeance, Chang. A retired Bangkok cop with a pen­chant for bar­bar­ic jus­tice, Chang’s pledge to cleanse the city’s dis­eased soul sees him go fist-to-fist with Gosling’s brood­ing Thai box­ing club own­er Julian, who, iron­i­cal­ly it turns out, isn’t much of a fighter.

Watch­ing intent­ly in the shad­ows is Julian’s moth­er, Crys­tal (a scene-steal­ing Kristin Scott Thomas). Head of the fam­i­ly dope traf­fick­ing busi­ness and a fear­some matri­arch, Crys­tal has flown in from Amer­i­ca to col­lect the body of her first-born (and favourite) son, Bil­ly (Tom Burke). Heart­bro­ken and mad on revenge, she arrives expect­ing her child’s killer to have already been tak­en care of. But Julian explains that things are more com­pli­cat­ed than they appear — Bil­ly died at the hands of the father of the 16-year-old girl he bru­tal­ly raped and killed, a detail that bare­ly twitch­es the dial on Crystal’s moral compass.

In the next scene Julian brings his favourite hook­er, Mai (Yayay­ing Rhatha Phongam), to din­ner under the pre­tence that she be intro­duced as his girl­friend in a fee­ble attempt to impress his moth­er. Crys­tal wastes no time in let­ting her ill-feel­ings be known, berat­ing the ​“cum dump­ster” sat beside her before turn­ing her ven­omous tongue on Julian, cit­ing penis envy as the root of his inad­e­qua­cy as a son and man. Now is not the time for pleas­antries. Eye-for-an-eye ret­ri­bu­tion is the only thing that will sate her anguish, and once again Julian has proven him­self to be a dis­ap­point­ment. ​“If the tables were turned, your broth­er would have found your killer and brought me his head on a fuck­ing plat­ter,” she hisses.

As moth­er-son rela­tion­ships go, they don’t come more messed up than this one. Despite his ma’s cal­loused dis­po­si­tion and emo­tion­al vacu­ity, how­ev­er, Julian is unflinch­ing­ly obe­di­ent; he keeps her cig­a­rettes lit and kiss­es her cheek when prompt­ed. When Mai ques­tions the way Crys­tal treats Julian, he explodes in a fit of indig­na­tion. As if their rela­tion­ship wasn’t com­plex enough, there’s also a trace of chem­i­cal imbal­ance between Crys­tal and Julian that occa­sion­al­ly takes a dip into Freudi­an waters. Julian is chained to his mother’s womb, his actions dic­tat­ed not just by a desire to pla­cate her but also, on a sub­con­scious lev­el, by the urge to lib­er­ate him­self from her. It’s this dan­ger­ous mix­ture of love and fear, devo­tion and con­tempt, which pro­pels his Dan­tean descent into an infer­no of vice and masochism.

To Julian, Crys­tal is the Dev­il and God. She is his church. If self-sac­ri­fice is the ulti­mate show of faith, then a recur­rent fan­ta­sy sequence in which Julian sub­mits to being fig­u­ra­tive­ly cas­trat­ed by a man with a blade (whom we lat­er dis­cov­er to be Chang) is a gra­tu­itous sign of his enslave­ment to the mater­nal phal­lus. Added to this, it’s pos­si­ble that the film’s oth­er female char­ac­ters are in fact lady­boys, includ­ing Mai, who at one point is seen mas­tur­bat­ing in front of Julian as he sits paral­ysed in a chair. This teas­ing ambi­gu­i­ty of the film’s gen­der rep­re­sen­ta­tion may explain why Thai­land was cho­sen as the setting.

If Dri­ve was Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s high-sheen (wheel)spin on were­wolf mythol­o­gy, his ninth direc­to­r­i­al fea­ture is a repur­pos­ing of anoth­er trag­ic lit­er­ary mon­ster. Only God For­gives is a dark Oedi­pal bal­let, a lucid fever dream that pulls you in from the open­ing frame and doesn’t let you go. As in Dri­ve the char­ac­ters exist with­in a height­ened real­i­ty — inte­ri­ors are per­pet­u­al­ly bathed in pools of deep red and blue light; beads of dis­co-ball light dance and skip off sur­faces like drunk­en spir­its; pros­ti­tutes wait tables at cheap karaōke clubs, or else adorn plush sofas in neon-lit back­rooms like dolls arranged neat­ly on a dress­er, wait­ing to be played with.

All the while Julian moves tiger­ish­ly through this claus­tro­pho­bic pur­ga­to­ry; com­pos­er Cliff Martinez’s del­i­cate cacoph­o­ny of trib­al drums and wind chimes set­ting a fore­bod­ing, rhyth­mic pace. When the vio­lence comes, it does so in ear-punch­ing thun­der claps — fetishised scenes of bod­i­ly muti­la­tion are often pro­longed, the cam­era mer­ci­less and unblink­ing, inten­si­fy­ing the sen­sa­tion of being trapped inside some­one else’s night­mare. The sound of Chang’s razor-sharp wak­iza­shi sword cut­ting through the thick, putrid air adds yet anoth­er lay­er to the film’s vis­cer­al tone.

Whether glid­ing omi­nous­ly down long, lav­ish­ly dec­o­rat­ed cor­ri­dors or fixed between door­frames look­ing into per­fect­ly sym­met­ri­cal rooms, DoP Lar­ry Smith’s voyeuris­tic lens gives the film a hyp­not­ic, haunt­ed feel. Refn has drawn sim­i­lar­i­ties between Only God For­gives and Dri­ve, but it shares a more tan­gi­ble spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion with the Dan­ish writer/director’s ellip­ti­cal 2003 thriller Fear X, in which John Tur­tur­ro expe­ri­ences fright­en­ing visions relat­ing to his wife’s seem­ing­ly ran­dom death.

Styl­is­ti­cal­ly it evokes the work of David Lynch and Gas­par Noé — though he’s not offi­cial­ly cred­it­ed (he is thanked), the Irre­versible director’s pres­ence on set sure­ly rubbed off on Refn. As a foot­note, it’s intrigu­ing that Only God For­gives is ded­i­cat­ed to Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky. Yet if that is an acknowl­edge­ment of fur­ther cre­ative emu­la­tion, it takes noth­ing away from what is an unques­tion­ably self-indul­gent but engross­ing sin­gu­lar vision. This is by some way Refn’s most com­plete film. It may even be his masterpiece.