Jonny Greenwood - You Were Never Really Here Reviews

Ramsay on collaborating with Phoenix and composer Jonny Greenwood, surviving career trauma, and how in 2018 we all are suffering from PTSD.

During a rare unplugged moment from the hectic weeks of prepping "Y'all Were Never Really Here," Lynne Ramsay saturday in the backyard of the Brooklyn apartment where she stayed.

"It was pitch blackness and I could hear all these explosions," said Ramsay. "And I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' I idea I was going crazy, but information technology was actually the Quaternary of July and I couldn't see the fireworks."

Ramsay recorded the audio of the fireworks and played information technology for Joaquin Phoenix, who was getting set up to play Joe, a PTSD combat veteran-turned-hitman in "You lot Were Never Really Here." As she played the recording, Ramsay told him, "this is what goes on in your caput every day.'"

The Scottish director had never met Phoenix before the weeks of furiously prepping her first American film – needing to take advantage of a small summer opening in Phoenix'southward packed schedule, just one month later having secured financing at the Cannes Film Festival – just he more than confirmed her instincts that he would be perfect for the role. In particular, Ramsay loved the kid-like quality the actor brought to a fierce and unpredictable character.

"When you take that repeated trauma you tin sometimes get stuck," said Ramsay. "There's something very naive about you lot that's probably beautiful, nonetheless ane moment it can experience terrifying, the next minute it can be funny, you just don't what you expect, but I also remember that makes an exciting film to watch."

Joaquin Phoenix and Lynne Ramsay

Pete Summers/REX/Shutterstock

While Ramsay'due south previous protagonists take all experienced a major trauma, Phoenix's hitman is something different. In "Ratcatcher," "Morvern Callar" and "Nosotros Demand To Talk About Kevin" her characters are forced to try and to pick up the pieces following one tragic, life-altering upshot that happens early in he film. On the other hand, "You Were Never Here" has the narrative structure of shattered glass, designed to put the audience in the shoes of a character whose heed is unraveling under the cascade of traumas – flashbacks of his calumniating father, PTSD from gainsay and the disorientation of a revenge mission that forces Joe to navigate a hazy earth of men with their easily on the levers of power and an under-historic period sex ring.

"I think we're all getting a little PTSD from right at present, it's a crazy time," said Ramsay in response to the question if her quaternary characteristic was in part a reaction to the land of the globe today. "Nothing's black and white any more or reliable, at that place'due south and so much data. I did go off the grid for a while [to write the screenplay]."

It wasn't a world gone mad that Ramsay was reacting to when she disappeared in the winter of 2013-2014 with her girl and hubby to Santorini – a Greek island that in the center of winter is largely empty – but the fallout of "Jane Got a Gun," which the manager quit right as filming began. Subsequently Ramsay concluded the producers would never allow her make her version of the film and left the flick, she became the victim of horrible rumors and a lawsuit – neither of which were why she seeked refuge in Santorini.

"I idea I was going to brand a film and I didn't and that was actually painful," said Ramsay. "I made the film in [my] head, I learned so much and in a style it informed this [movie]. There was a lot of furry, there was a real pitch to brand something really special and take the good stuff from a painful experience."

Removed from outside world in the peace and quiet of the isle, Ramsay found the focus and vision of how to adapt Jonathan Ames book into a cinema of disorientation. When she emerged from the serenity of her sojourn she was immediately able to hear her new film.

"You Were Never Really Hither"

Alison Cohen Rosa | Amazon Studios

"You get plunked in New York afterwards writing the script in a village with no cars in Greece and you're off the grid and close you optics and hear the elevated train, you recollect, 'this is the sound of madness,'" said Ramsay. That disorientating madness became the driving forcefulness of Ramsay and her audio designer Paul Davies' collaboration as correct from the start of the film the audience is grounded in the unsettling frequency of Joe'due south internal country.

To go the narrative bulldoze she needed out of her soundtrack Ramsay was drastic to get the unique talents of her "We Need to Talk Almost Kevin" composer Jonny Greenwood ("Phantom Thread") onboard, but the Radiohead guitarist-turned-Oscar nominated composer was on tour with the ring. Ramsay would send Greenwood, who had read the script early on, five to fifteen infinitesimal pieces of the flick while she was editing with the hope of luring the busy musician. Eventually she would receive back minutes of music – Greenwood doesn't etch to picture – that Davies and Greenwood's sound engineer would edit and incorporate into the film's soundscape.

"Jonny would react to the reel [and] send united states of america stuff," said Ramsay. "The stuff was pretty incredible from the get go [because] it was virtually this graphic symbol – it was a world you were familiar with and and so became something totally different."

Combined with Davies audio blueprint and Phoenix's functioning, Greenwood's music was a final layer of subjective unease, only then shifts gears toward the unfolding mystery of not knowing what volition happen adjacent. That forward thrust, that sense of both character and audition not knowing how he'll react, or what he'll do next, gives the film an exciting narrative drive.

"You Were Never Actually Here"

Alison Cohen Rosa | Amazon Studios

In a film where Ramsay was pushing the boundaries of the viewer'due south relationship with her protagonist, she admits the beginning Cannes audience was the almost nerve wracking moment of her career. As the film started to elicit gasps Ramsay started to relax – the 2000-person theater somewhen breaking into a seven-minute standing ovation at the film's finish – she had found a fashion not only to capture that storm of explosions going on in Joe'due south head, she had found a way to engage an audience in his story.

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Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2018/04/you-were-never-really-here-how-lynne-ramsay-joaquin-phoenix-jonny-greenwood-interview-1201949627/

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