\u2018Airport\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you look at the promotional poster or the DVD release of You Were Never Really Here<\/em>, one of the main quotes you\u2019ll probably notice is from The Times<\/em>, describing the work as \u2018Taxi Driver for a new century\u2019. While there\u2019s some truth of similarities in the basic plot (a disturbed Vietnam veteran tries to save a girl from prostitution using increasingly violent means), Lynne Ramsay\u2019s work provides a drastically different aesthetic approach in terms of editing, aesthetic and particularly characterisation. Our introduction to the monolithic Joe (Juaquin Phoenix) in the film\u2019s first scenes is an effective example; no grand monologue about the state of the city is mentioned, and only a single intelligible diegetic word is spoken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Before we\u2019re graced with the film\u2019s opening image, we\u2019re met with a barrage of presently unlocatable sounds. The first sounds like a train. Others sound like mechanical ringing, a ringing which gets progressively louder to the point of excruciation. Whispers begin to be heard, uttering descending numbers. A man\u2019s voice mixes with that of a younger boy, both counting down. All of this takes place without having a picture with which to link these unsettling noises. By the time the image appears, the unnerving atmosphere is complemented with an equally upsetting image of Joe\u2019s self-asphyxiation before cutting to an image of an unspeaking child, while the words \u2018I must do better, sir\u2019 are heard in nondiegetic form over this static image. The camera returns to Joe briefly before cutting to an obscured photo of an unknown girl as it burns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a number of different, more expository ways to depict these images of abuse, first among them, expository dialogue. By robbing us of this most common narrative form, Ramsay forces the audience to focus and piece meaning together from minimal details. Unlike Travis Bickle\u2019s grand monologue about the scum of New York city, we are encouraged here to decipher Joe through actions rather than words. We watch him put the burnt photo in the bin, remove a plastic bag from a fire alarm, and we see Joe meticulously cleaning a hammer. Except we don\u2019t see Joe. Not fully, anyway. We just see his torso performing the actions, not his head or legs. This \u2018cutting\u2019 frame shot has been used frequently throughout Ramsay\u2019s work to suggest the fragmented internal mindset of her characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, we watch Joe flush a bloody tissue down the toilet and put a series of items, including a necklace \u2013 one that would appear to be of some significance due to the amount of time the camera lingers on it. Yet all these objects are swiftly placed in a plastic bag with no further explanation. The camera cuts to Joe\u2019s door with a \u2018Do Not Disturb\u2019 sign; the door opens slightly, but nobody leaves. When Joe exits the room, Johnny Greenwood\u2019s \u2018Sandy\u2019s Necklace\u2019 starts to play as Joe dumps the bag in a bin. As the song (titled after an object whose context we never learn anything about) continues, the camera swerves into point-of view shot as it sneaks down hotel corridors, stopping and retreating at reception when police lights are seen outside the windows. At last, we finally see the back of Joe\u2019s head, but even this is hooded. So far, the camera has been at pains not to show us the film\u2019s central character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our first glimpse of Joe is obscured in silhouette as he walks outside under shadow of night. As he lumbers through an alleyway and is suddenly attacked by an unknown assailant, you\u2019d expect some sort of dialogue, or at least a grunt. But Joe seems to expect this onslaught, weathering the attacker\u2019s weapon with barely a flinch before taking him down with not much more thana single, brutal headbutt. Staring at his defeated adversary briefly before turning in the other direction and walking left of the camera as the techno beats of Greenwood\u2019s \u2018Dark Streets\u2019 begin, we just witness Joe\u2019s hand on a door before we hear him utter his first word of the film: \u2018Airport\u2019. We don\u2019t see his face saying these words, we don\u2019t see him talking to the taxi driver, we just hear the one word. Just after this, we see a close-up of the door that the unseen Joe has just shut, which reads: \u2018Cab Cincinnati\u2019. We could have had a monologue from Joe mentioning the location of the film in the work we\u2019re about to watch, but that would\u2019ve been expository. And where\u2019s the fun in that? We finally see the paranoid, bearded face of Joe within the vehicle. A young De Niro this ain\u2019t. We can hear the driver singing a song, and the camera then cuts to the driver singing said song. Joe listens silently, but the sound of the song suddenly cuts out, and the subsequent image of the driver show his lips mouthing the film\u2019s title alongside the titles that appear and disappear in a similarly ominous form to the title sequence of Ramsay\u2019s We Need To Talk About Kevin<\/em>. After this short, dream-like moment, the driver\u2019s song returns, and Joe continues to stare listlessly into the distance. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s happened, and Ramsay doesn\u2019t stop to explain. Sound, imagery and a lack of dialogue are employed to put the audience in a position of subordination. Nothing is quite clear yet, and these techniques of negation place us right outside our comfort zone. It\u2019s almost like we were never really here, eh?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Airport\u2019. If you look at the promotional poster or the DVD release of You Were Never Really Here, one of the main quotes you\u2019ll probably notice is from The Times, describing the work as \u2018Taxi Driver for a new century\u2019. While there\u2019s some truth of similarities in the basic plot (a disturbed Vietnam veteran tries to save … <\/p>\n