You Were Never Really Here with Hannah Woodhead
[90 Mins or Less Film Fest Music]
SAM: 0:20 Hello, I'm Sam Clements and welcome to the 90 Minutes or Less Film Fest. This is a podcast that celebrates films with a 90 minute or less runtime and is entirely curated by guests on this podcast. Today, we're joined by Hannah Woodhead, film critic and associate editor at Little White Lies magazine. Hello, Hannah.
HANNAH: 0:40 Hi Sam
SAM: 0:41 Thank you for podding.
HANNAH: 0:43 Thank you for having me. I feel like when this podcast came to fruition, I tweeted you and now I'm finally doing it. I'm very excited.
SAM: 0:51 I'm sorry it's taken so long. It was last year as we did a sort of an end of the year round-up pod. There were quite a few very good films that were eligible for this film festival. So it was amazing to get a tweet from you, saying 'lets do this one'.
HANNAH: 1:02 Straight away, no messing around. I was like, revenge thriller straight away. Yeah, 90 minutes. Come on, let's do this. But it's been, I think, you know, you want to ease people into it as well. You don't want to go straight in like, here's a horribly brutal film about hitmen.
SAM: 1:15 That's true actually, the first couple of films in the festival are comedies. But I think as we do more, we're aging up. We're getting... the certificates are getting a bit higher.
HANNAH: 1:22 Maturing.
SAM: 1:24 And yeah, here we are. So your job is watching movies.
HANNAH: 1:27 Literally my job. Yeah, it's the biggest scam in the world. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. If you ever meet a film critic whose like 'urgh yeah my job'? No, no, I, I find it very hard when I go to festivals and when I meet critics who've been doing it a long time and they're jaded, because I'm still like, films are the best thing ever, and I'm so excited! And you know, Little White Lies is the magazine that I started reading when I was about 15 years old. It's kind of crazy to be now, you know, working on it every single day.
SAM: 1:55 Such a beautiful and very unique magazine.
HANNAH: 1:58 Thank you very much.
SAM: 1:58 I am an avid subscriber. Outside of work do you also watch movies for pleasure? Is it or is that a bit too much like bringing your work home with you?
HANNAH: 2:06 I think once you become a film critic, you kind of have to just give up and be like, this is my life now. And you know, no one gets into this job for the money. So you have to kind of have this real like full body like, this is my whole life. This is who I am as a person. My identity is movies. So for me, yeah, there's no kind of distinction between being at work and being at home! Having said that, I can switch off, I'm not constantly watching things like, hmm yes, my critical eyes is telling me... I went to see Punchdrunk Love the other night, which is 90 minutes, I believe. And I was laughing the whole way through. I was just like having an absolute ball. So you know, I think it's important when your whole life is watching movies to be able to relax, but I am constantly thinking about movies, constantly waiting to see another movie. So my whole identity basically.
SAM: 2:56 And I guess when you're watching films for work, the runtime doesn't really matter because you have to watch it. You got to review, you gotta do the interview. But when it comes to movies in your home life, does runtime ever come into it?
HANNAH: 3:08 I do love a 90 minute movie. I'm very, like, if I find out something is sub 90 minutes, I'm like, this is amazing. It doesn't really feel like I'm watching a movie. So you know, because TV is like 45 minutes now. So I could watch two episodes of Madmen or I can watch one movie. And I always feel like I've accomplished more if I watch a movie than TV. So but I mean, you know, I think it very much depends on the film. I would very happily sit through The House That Jack Built, which is two and a half hours. And then I'd very happily sit through something that's 80 minutes. It's just kind of what, what I'm in the mood for, I think.
SAM: 3:44 So when we got in touch, well, when we announced the film festival and you saw what we were doing, it sounds like you had a pretty good idea of what you wanted to do. Was there anything else that you considered?
HANNAH: 3:54 Oh, now I'm like, all the 90 minute movies I know who have gone out of my head. Before we started recording this episode, I mentioned that I'm a big fan of Shrek, and I was heartbroken to realize it's like 93 minutes or something so therefore would not qualify. But the movie I've chosen was one that I was very passionate about last year and was like, advocating to anyone who came within a sort of 10 mile radius of me. And one of my selling points was it's 90 minutes! So you know, I feel like if I recommend a film to someone, and it's 90 minutes, then they're not having to spend too much of their energy on it. Well, maybe not in this case, I think you do have to spend quite a lot of energy on it. But I wouldn't want to tell someone to go watch a 3 hour movie and then them hate it. I feel like I would have stolen something from them. But 90 minutes, I might take a punt on it.
SAM: 4:39 True, this is quite a nice, you know, it's not too much of a commitment. So hopefully you like it. And you know what? It's not that much time.
HANNAH: 4:45 Yeah exactly.
SAM: 4:45 It's 4 episodes of Friends.
HANNAH: 4:47 Yeah, and I think this is far more enjoyable than 4 episodes of Friends.
SAM: 4:51 I would like to see the Friends cast recreate this film. I think at this point, we should ask, Hannah what film did you choose for the festival?
HANNAH: 4:56 I have chosen Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here.
[90 Mins or Less Film Fest Jingle]
SAM: 5:04 From celebrated director Lynne Ramsay (We Need To Talk About Kevin), You Were Never Really Here is a powerful and intensely thrilling reworking of the crime genre. A tormented but brutal hired gun sets out to rescue a young girl from a sex ring, only to find himself weathering a storm of violent vengeance when matters go awry. Featuring a career-best performance from Joaquin Phoenix as a solitary and deeply troubled underworld mercenary, You Were Never Really Here is a stylish and brutal tale of vengeance and corruption. Oof, what a synopsis!
HANNAH: 5:40 I very much enjoyed your reading of it. I would like to hear you do the kind of 'in a world where' you know that would be very nice.
SAM: 5:47 The trailer read.
HANNAH: 5:48 That's quite a lot that they're packing into that synopsis.
SAM: 5:51 Violence! Vengeance! Thrilling!
HANNAH: 5:53 Yeah, yeah, they're trying to sell that to the kind of Jean-Claude Van Damme crew aren't they? Yeah. Which is maybe not the approach I would have taken. And I think that's something this film probably suffered from a bit was people didn't really know what they were getting themselves into, and then got to the cinema and were like, 'what the hell? I was here for Joaquin Phoenix bashing people's heads in, I didn't expect to have feelings!'
FILM CLIP from You Were Never Really Here 6:17
Senator Votto: Nina, her name is Nina. I've heard of these places, underage girls.
Joe: Senator if she's there, I'll get her.
Senator Votto: McCleary said you were brutal.
Joe: ...I can be.
SAM: 6:47 Can you remember when you first saw this movie?
HANNAH: 6:49 Yeah. Very well, I was at the London Film Festival. And I guess it would have been 2017. So this was a month before I began my job at Little White Lies, to cast your minds back to 2017. I was very excited to be at the London Film Festival, it was my first one since I moved here. And I was like, so you know, I'm a critic. I'm covering this for a website, I'm very excited. And I was super excited to see You Were Never Really Here because I had seen We Need To Talk About Kevin in my first year of university and totally kind of, I wouldn't say fall in love with it. I was just very obsessed with it. I was like, this is one of the most kind of electrifying things I've ever seen. It really changed how I looked at film and how... and really what I want to do with my career made me kind of want to become a critic. So I was like, yes, great, Lynne Ramsay's back. So super excited for this. And then I went and watched You Were Never Really Here, it was a 10am press screening, came out and was just like, 'Oh dear god, like that was the most intense...' I don't think I breathed the entire duration of the film. And luckily, it's only 90 minutes so that was fine. But it was yeah, this bleak really stunning film that was sort of unlike anything else. And again from the catalogue description, I would have never guessed what I was about to bear witness to. But I hadn't seen any of the reactions out of Cannes to it. So I did just totally go in completely blind. And that doesn't happen to me very often because I'm so immersed now in the world of film, it was really one of the last times I can remember being truly kind of like, absolutely awe struck by film.
SAM: 8:21 That's definitely on the film's side. If you can go in not knowing so much about it and the film can surprise you and this film is a really surprising movie. I think when I saw it, it was at a festival as well, and I think they rushed, maybe it was Cannes, to finish it in time for the deadline. So when I saw it had no credits, apart from 'a film by Lynne Ramsay, starring Joaquin Phoenix' and that was it.
HANNAH: 8:40 God yeah, cuz the end credits actually are quite, quite good.
SAM: 8:44 Yeah!
HANNAH: 8:45 And it won... did Lynne get a directing prize?
SAM: 8:47 It won screenplay, which Lynne wrote and then Joaquin for Best Actor.
HANNAH: 8:51 There's a wonderful clip of him at the prize giving ceremony where they announced his name and he's just kind of like 'what?' looking around the room. Clearly he had no idea.
SAM: 9:00 Are you a Lynne Ramsay fan? I think we should also point out that Lynne is the first female director in the film festival, with her only 90 minutes or less film.
HANNAH: 9:09 Yeah, because her other films...We Need To Talk About Kevin is long.
SAM: 9:14 That's a long one
HANNAH: 9:14 In every sense!
SAM: 9:15 And her earlier ones are in that Shrek sort of length, 93 minutes.
HANNAH: 9:21 That's how I refer to it, the Shrek length.
SAM: 9:23 The Shrek Zone.
HANNAH: 9:24 Wow I can't believe she's the first woman. I feel like I'm doing a proud, I'm repping for the women. Yeah, I'm a big Lynne fan. I think she is probably, definitely the greatest female director working today if not the greatest director working today not to be, you know, sweeping in my statement, but I adore her. I think she is a true visionary. I think it's very rare to find a director who is so uncompromising in her vision. And every film she makes feels like a Lynne Ramsay film, you know, she's only made 4 films, which I think is absurd. She's been doing it 20/30 years now. But she is unfortunately a woman and that means that she doesn't get as many opportunities as men and there have been a couple of instances where she's been attached to a project and it's just not happened. So The Lovely Bones which went on to be made into a film in gosh, 2010 maybe a little bit earlier?
SAM: 10:16 I can't remember if it's pre or post Kevin. Did she do Kevin because she lost that one?
HANNAH: 10:22 Jane Got A Gun was after Kevin.
SAM: 10:23 Oh, yeah, of course!
HANNAH: 10:25 So both times I think a man made the film in the end. Which is you know. And I remember with Jane Got A Gun there was a whole kind of... there were like memos about her being difficult to work with and things that were going around so you know, I think she's probably got a rough ride from the kind of Hollywood studio system. She left The Lovely Bones because she didn't want it to be as close to the book as the production company did. And then Jane Got A Gun and I think it was to do with... I mean to do with many things I'm sure but, the ending she didn't want to give it a happy ending. The financiers wanted it to have a happy ending. That's another trademark of a Lynne Ramsay film, probably not going to be a happy ending. But yeah, you know, I adore her and I think it's great that she gets to do these projects, which give her the room to do what she needs to do. I said We Need To Talk About Kevin is one of the most kind of shocking things I've ever seen in the cinema.
SAM: 11:22 Lynne Ramsay's last few films have all been based on novels and I always wonder what attracts her and I think it is worth mentioning her sort of potted film history of making or not making films because I think we wouldn't have films like You Were Never Really Here if she hadn't been kicked off the larger, you know, star-driven Jane Got A Gun with Natalie Portman. I think this is sort of like as a result of that she's like, right, I'm going to do my own thing low budget. I'll get my mates, we'll be in New York, we'll do this short shoot, we'll turn it around real quick. And I'm sort of thankful for the Jane Got A Gun thing even though it sounds awful, that we now have You Were Never Really Here.
HANNAH: 11:55 100% I would not trade You Were Never Really Here for a hundred Jane Got A Gun's.
SAM: 12:00 Jane Got A Hundred Guns
HANNAH: 12:01 We all saw how Jane Got A Gun worked out for the studio, didn't we? So you know, I do kind of,and this is a general theme, I've kind of noticed of these wonderful female directors, making an absolutely wonderful film or a couple of absolutely wonderful films. And then everyone's like, make them do, well not make them do, let them do a Marvel movie. You know, like Chloé Zhao and Lucrecia Martel being offered Black Widow. And you know, whilst I would love for them to get the opportunity to make the films that they're passionate about, part of me loves that Lynne Ramsay is still making these kind of weird, dark, violent films. She's very good at it. And I would much rather have something like this that takes five years than a kind of half baked blockbuster that means that she doesn't get to do something as beautiful as this.
SAM: 12:49 Whilst a lot of her films have similar tropes, definitely in terms of the things like the violence and the darkness, this is quite unique for her. I don't think she's done a film with as big a male lead as this. Her other films are either, with Kevin it's split between the two characters, Kevin and his mum, and in Morvern Callar, it's all about Sam Morten's performance. Ratcatcher is a bunch of kids. So this is like dealing with a grown, sort of middle aged guy, and, you know, a complex male character and I think having Lynne write for that sort of character is fascinating.
HANNAH: 13:17 Oh, yeah. Hundred percent. Yeah, I was thinking about this earlier, because I thought, oh, in the wrong hands, this could have been a completely different sort of violent you know...
SAM: 13:28 It would have been the film the back of the DVD says it is.
HANNAH: 13:30 Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And I think it's that perfect marriage of having a director-writer who is so sensitive, and in tune with the stories she's trying to tell. But also Joaquin Phoenix, who just, I mean, having never met them, I can't I can't really I can, I can speculate, which is what I'm about to do. They just seem to kind of understand each other and understand perfectly the story they're trying to tell together, which you know, is I think it's a very rare thing. And I feel... I've seen this film 4 times now. And every time I feel kind of privileged that I get to watch it, you know, which is such a rare feeling when you spend your whole life watching movies, you're just kind of like, wow, once in a while something comes along that really does feel special. And that's this film for me totally.
SAM: 14:12 Something I'm really enjoying doing this podcast is people are curating my home viewing. When you put this on, I was like, Oh, yeah, I think I quite like that film. I saw it a couple of years ago, or whatever is quite recent, I think I remembered it. Rewatching it a couple of days ago, I didn't remember half of the stuff, it blew my mind! And it was like a really nice, you know, experience to go through that again.
HANNAH: 14:31 Yeah, especially because we're so kind of saturated. And I'm sure that you as well working in film, you know, we just do watch a lot of movies, some good, some bad. And you do... it is so nice to kind of revisit something recent that you remember liking and get more from it. And the 90 minute element of You Were Never Really Here is that she's doing so much, like she's doing like gymnastics, with that 90 minute runtime, you know, it feels so tight and so concentrated. But there's so much going on and there's so much to kind of unpack and so many things she's trying to do, there's this whole underwater sequence, which again, it just takes my breath away every time I see it. And to kind of have that mastery and not need two and a half hours is like you know, a real testament to her talent as a filmmaker.
SAM: 15:17 I love the way it's been put together. So there's lots of scenes where you see just before or just after quite a major piece but she doesn't show you, like say it's violence, the guy is a hitman, Joe played by Joaquin Phoenix in this film. And they never really, apart from there's a scene where on CCTV you see him walking around with his hammer, which is used a lot of the marketing. You usually just see him just after the violence.
HANNAH: 15:38 Yeah, yeah. And I think that's such a canny move because it makes it not about the violence really. The CCTV scene is like so tense and so shocking. And you have this kind of like crooner song in the background sung by this woman. And it's really, really unnerving to watch. But it's that implied violence and the kind of you know, the sight of the blood and the kind of climactic scene. I try not to spoil it in case people haven't seen the movie, but the kind of ending climax is so just 'what the hell', you know, and I yeah, I think, I've already said, you know, I think this, this could have been a total mess in someone else's hands. But yeah, I, I really think that she understands what makes the character of Joe interesting. And it's not that he's a violent man. It's the kind of things that are going on inside his head, the things that he's been through, all these hints we get the kind of things that he's seen and the things that he's done. We know that he was a soldier, we see this kind of flashback of him giving a chocolate bar to a child in the desert. And we see him on an FBI raid of a human trafficking ring. And we see him being abused as a child by his father, and all these kind of glimpses that we get are used so economically, that they just kind of stay in your head, you get these like, beautifully haunting images that just stick with you.
FILM CLIP from You Were Never Really Here 16:04
Joe's Mother: [singing] MNOP, I could go on all day.
Joe: Yes you could.
Joe's Mother: [singing] QRST, Alphabetically speaking…
Both: ...you're OK.
Joe: [singing] U make my life complete, V means you're very sweet
Joe's Mother: [singing] W, X, Y, Z
SAM: 17:36 Whilst it is less than 90 minutes, it is quite an experience. And I think it's just because Lynne gives you, I'm on first name terms with Lynne Ramsay now, because Lynne just sort of shows you hints of, you know, what the character is going through, and it lets you fill in the blanks. That's the joy, you know, it's show don't tell, and I think with this they just they just like they didn't even show you. It's like you can have a peek. But then after that, you can think about him, what he's been through as a war vet and when he was involved in the FBI and stuff, but we don't need the guy's history. He's dealt with some serious stuff. And that's all in his head whilst he's being quite silly with green M&Ms or something.
HANNAH: 18:08 Yeah, there's a scene where he's talking to the guy who employs him, I guess. And he crushes this, he's got this green jelly bean and he crushes it between his fingers. And he's like, why are there never any green ones in the bowl. And you can kind of hear like the guy, the other guy's voice like in this background noise thing. And that's the other thing that's so kind of fascinating to me about the way this film is constructed, like the soundscape in this film is just phenomenal. You've got Jonny Greenwood's score, and Johnny is an absolute marvel, both on this film and Phantom Thread, which came out the same year. And you know, I think everyone kind of like was marveling over how beautiful his score was for that. But this for me is his masterpiece. And then you have all these sounds that just kind of infect your head. There's this cat that purrs and the crunch of the jelly bean and the sounds of the street and just you get a real sense how overwhelmed he is by everything, and how the only thing he really has control over is the violence and you know, his enactment of that.
SAM: 19:08 That's a really riveting thing to watch. This guy...while he's a big guy, he's not really like threatening. He sort of like half paying attention to stuff, he walks around his house caring for his mum in his pajamas, whatever. But when there is an act of violence, he's so quick. He's got those old skills, I guess you're supposed to be implied, you know, he's still got it. But it's just not the thing he's dealing with right now. But I love the soundscape. And I think it did win Best Sound Editing at the British Independent Film Awards. And then it didn't pick it up anywhere else. But it's to show the character’s frame of mind like he's so focused on traumatic experiences from his past, he's just like, half present. It's like he's just stumbling around. And he still vaguely remembers how to be a hitman. So he can just do that. But he doesn't have to think about it. It's a full dialogue isn't between you, the audience and Lynne, at this point and what Joaquin's doing, it's like, we'll just show them a little bit. But your brain is like working so much throughout this movie. I think that's what makes quite a unique experience. It's an 89 minutes long conversation with Lynne Ramsay.
HANNAH: 20:04 Yeah, yeah, no, I love that. And that plays into the intimacy of it as well. Because the times we see Joe kind of being happy and normal are when he's with his mum at home, or when he's with the cat. But this is, the film kind of opens with him having just completed a job. And then he goes home to his mum, and they have this very sort of like comic exchange where she's in the bathroom, and he's like, trying to get her to come out of the bathroom. And then there's a little bit later on, where they kind of do a riff on Psycho. And there's just all these very like, these such sweet, tender moments. And they're the kind of calm in the midst of the storm for him. And it's just, I don't think we kind of see that softness in hit man movies. You know, I love the John Wick movies, but we're not seeing John Wick sitting at home being soft, you know.
SAM: 20:54 I always wonder what these genre tropes do when they're at home, on a day off, on a weekend. This isn't quite a weekend but it's focused more on his home life rather than his professional life. We can assume what happens. We see the body, you know, he was successful.
HANNAH: 21:08 Yeah, exactly. Particularly at the beginning, you know, when you see him kind of having done this job, you know, I think the inference here of everything is so potent, and sometimes, and it's that old adage of what you don't see can be worse than what you do see. What you're inventing in your head the whole time, especially with the girls, who are the victims of sex trafficking, you know this is happening, and what you're kind of imagining is so much worse than what you're actually seeing. I think that's maybe one of the things people find confronting about this movie is that they're being asked to deal with a lot of very uncomfortable things, but it's not been spoon fed to them. So there's a whole kind of like government conspiracy going on as well, which is just kind of part of what's happening, you know, it's not like a Manchurian Candidate 'we've got to expose the corruption see!', it's just like, this is a horrible thing that's happening. And this one guy recognizes that he can not do a single goddamn thing about it. And he's going to do the one thing he can do, which is what he's good at, which is, you know, hurting people.
SAM: 22:11 Yeah.
HANNAH: 22:12 And, you know... to have that kind of insight into what it must be like is, is exceptional, it's the kind of character that I think, you know, it's a little bit reminiscent of like Travis Bickle or something, but it's very much Lynne Ramsay's spin on that. And Lynne Ramsay is a master of making you care about unsympathetic characters. Think about Tilda Swinton in We Need To Talk About Kevin, and even Kevin, in We Need To Talk About Kevin, you know, these kind of characters who are so cold and so incongruous, their surroundings, but she finds what makes them human, it makes you care and makes you interested in them as people.
SAM: 22:53 Absolutely. I think part of that is the quite intimate photography. This is a really beautifully shot film by Tom Townend who has worked with Lynne Ramsay for a number of years, right from when he was like, first started out in the business being like an assistant on Ratcatcher and here he is being the lead DOP. There's so many shots that really like, just because of the photography, make you sit up, like the scene in a hotel room, when some hitmen come in to try and kill Joe, and he ends up breaking one's neck. But it's quite a traumatic scene, and the camera flips up to an overhead mirror. That transition is amazing.
HANNAH: 23:26 Yeah. In that same scene when there's a shot fired and you see this blood spatter on Joaquin Phoenix's face and on the wall behind him and the wall is like this kind of weird green color. And I was like, the amount of kind of thought that has gone into like that, that shade of horrible green. And one of the things I caught on the rewatch that I kind of hadn't really thought about before was the opening credits, where it's kind of, you know, you get the scene of him in a hotel room and him leaving the hotel and he gets into a cab. And that's when we get the opening credits in the beginning of that fantastic score by Jonny Greenwood and the title card comes up. And I'm a bit of a title card nerd anyway, I love a good title card. And this one, you never see the whole title of the film on the same frame, which I think is fascinating. It kind of all fades out before you really had a chance to process it. And I just, you know, I, again, I think it's you know, there's something about Lynne, I think she picks these people that kind of, she feels comfortable with and she feels comfortable communicating her story with and maybe it comes out of, you know, the fact that her and Tom have worked together for so long. But he said that everyone seems to be reading from the same hymn sheet. There's not one note in this film where somebody has kind of fudged it. Everyone seems as kind of full, fully body committed as Joaquin is.
SAM: 24:46 They knew the restrictions around the shoot as well. I think Lynne Ramsay has said in interviews, we only had a window with Joaquin of a few weeks. And everybody was able to drop what they were doing, come to New York, and they shot it in real locations. They did a bit of guerrilla photography on the street. And she was saying with Joaquin Phoenix that he came for like the final stage of writing and just like hung out with her. Like that was his rehearsal process was just spending time with her. Yes. And everybody was just up for it. And that's so nice to read about when the product at the end of it is such a great film.
HANNAH: 25:15 Yeah. And especially, kind of compounded with all the trouble that Lynne has had getting movies made, it's nice to hear that this was a different experience, and that this was a case of it all kind of coming together. Especially in New York, where apparently it is notoriously difficult to make movies, which is very funny when you think about it, because it's you know, and even in this film New York's kind of incidental, which I think is interesting. Everyone makes such a big deal of like a New York movie, but this is just, you know, you're so kind of aware of it being Joaquin's film to command. It could be anywhere. It's just you know, the kind of flashing lights and everything you almost don't even realize what's going on around him. You're so in exactly what he's doing all time.
SAM: 25:58 Yeah, his face is like the thing I think of when I think of this film as it's usually quite tight on Joaquin Phoenix, and then whatever's in the background doesn't really matter, you know.
HANNAH: 26:10 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's this great quote from Roger Ebert, about cinema being a machine for empathy. And I think this is one of the greatest kind of examples of that, you know, it is a film that is so reliant on you connecting with this character, and, you know, not agreeing with what he's doing, but understanding the thought process and kind of understanding what's going on. And I must shout out as well, like, there's this great scene at Joe's house where he's kind of, you know, these hitmen have come for him, often as one does. And one of them's dying and they kind of had this very brief exchange about the kind of situation, the hopelessness of it all. And Charlene's I've Been To Paradise is playing on the stereo, which is a great, great song, fond memories of that from The Simpsons episode it was used in and he lies down next to him. And they're kind of holding hands and just singing the song. And it's this like, moment of such surreal serenity amid all this kind of chaos and the blood and the fact this guy is literally bleeding out on his kitchen floor. But you know, that's the magic of this. It just makes complete sense. You're like, yeah, this guy would do this, because he's so lonely and so broken. And the only thing that makes sense to him in that moment is to kind of lie there and sing this stupid pop song with this dying hitman, you know. And I think for a filmmaker to be able to create this completely different world and have me so enraptured, that at 90 minutes, I come out and I cannot remember having taken a breath the whole time is, you know, remarkable.
SAM: 27:41 I think it's picking all of those things we don't often see and the way Lynne wraps them up, it gives you such a unique viewing experience. And it flies by, it is a short film anyway, but it does fly by.
HANNAH: 27:52 Yeah, there's not an ounce of fat on this film.
SAM: 27:54 Not at all, but it feels like the most complete viewing experience.
HANNAH: 27:57 Yeah, I mean, it does exactly what you want a film to do. A great film is great storytelling. And this is great storytelling, it tells you a complete story in a very remarkable way in a very tight timeframe.
FILM CLIP from You Were Never Really Here 28:10
Joe: Where is she? Where's Nina now?
Agent: ...Williams
Joe: Governor Williams?
Agent: She's his favourite. They trade them.
SAM: 28:33 I'd really like to talk about the final scene of the film. Which is so disturbing.
HANNAH: 28:39 Ooh yeah.
SAM: 28:41 So I guess to set it up, Joe has sort of done the job and he's rescued Nina who's the girl he's saving from the sex ring. She, I think, doesn't have that many lines in the film at all. But she does talk to him at the scene, they're drinking their milk shakes, she goes to the bathroom, he pulls a gun out and shoots himself
HANNAH: 28:56 Out of nowhere.
SAM: 28:57 And it's the loudest gunshot in cinema history.
HANNAH: 29:01 I was kind of traumatized.
SAM: 29:04 The best thing about that scene is the waitress who's walking by covered in blood and doesn't react to it at all.
HANNAH: 29:11 And the guy, you hear this voice, because you can kind of hear these snippets of conversations and you hear this voice go, 'you're not supposed to have butter'. That always sticks with me for some reason. I don't know why! And then yeah, she just, she just puts the bill on the table. And of course, this all ties into the title. You know, it's like, oh, did any of this happen? Was he, was he ever really here? Who knows? That's the most violent moment in the film. And it's so confronting, because you're like, he saved the girl, everything's gonna be okay. And then that happens. And you're like, I'm watching a Lynne Ramsay movie about a hitman, you know, and a hitman who is very mentally unwell you know, but then she brings it back around.
SAM: 29:48 With the fake out.
HANNAH: 29:48 One of the best fake outs in recent cinema history.
SAM: 29:52 It's two audible gasps. I've seen in the cinema twice, and both times myself included, like, Whoa, I didn't see that coming. And then the reveal and everybody just exhaling. What a thing to do in the last two or three minutes of your film.
HANNAH: 30:07 Yeah, and I think we need it as well as an audience because it's been so bleak, especially for poor Nina. And then you know, for them to have this moment of kind of understanding right at the end where she pats him on the shoulder so gently, and says like, wake up, Joe. Yeah, it's just that I keep using the word tender but it really is just such a human film.
[90 Mins or Less Film Fest Jingle]
SAM: 30:28 Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here is part of the 90 Minutes or Less Film Festival. I was wondering, so Lynne Ramsay's last few films have all been based on novels. Do you have a dream Lynne Ramsay directing novel-that-you-quite-enjoy project, that if you could greenlight movies you just make that happen.
HANNAH: 30:50 Oh, I maybe like to see her do Wide Sargasso Sea. I think it's interesting that she... We Need To Talk About Kevin was by Lionel Shriver who's a woman, and this is by Jonathan Ames who's a man, and I'd like to see her do another female adaptation with a strong, oh I was going to say a strong female lead. No! Every female is strong. Or maybe something by Chuck Palahniuk. I feel like men who always adapt his movies.
SAM: 31:19 That would be a great combination.
HANNAH: 31:21 I feel like Invisible Monsters is 20 this year, maybe if she got her hands on that it would be kind of, it'll be fun. I really just want her to keep making beautiful films. I don't care if they're from books or otherwise.
SAM: 31:33 I hope they don't leave it, I think it was 6 years the gap between Kevin and this I'm hoping it's not another 6 years. So at our screening we're going to get this back on the big screen with Tom Townend's beautiful cinematography, Jonny Greenwood's amazing score playing in the cinema. If you could add an event element to the screening, what would you do?
HANNAH: 31:50 Oh, I think we definitely get Jonny down to do a live score for us. That's my dream in general is to see Jonny Greenwood do a live score but I think for this film as well because the score is such a kind of key part of it for me and a key part of my enjoyment. There would be green jelly beans for all, maybe some cats wandering around you know for some ambiance. And comfy seats, massive for this one, comfy seats. There's a great interview with Lucrecia Martel who I keep mentioning on this podcast, where she says that the biggest compliment to her is when someone falls asleep in her films because they feel comfortable and she wants people to feel comfortable. This movie I don't think you could fall asleep especially not at that gunshot because it's you know, it's all very loud, it's a loud movie but I think in that because it's so tense and so kind of shocking you want people to feel swaddled like beautiful newborn babies. Some comfortable seats, low lighting, good temperature you know, and Jonny Greenwood in the room.
SAM: 32:46 Sounds like such a nice warm experience. I'd quite like to work the hammer into the screening, not sure entirely how because the hammer of course in the film is used for quite nefarious purposes. But I was thinking maybe as people go in, the people who are like welcoming people to the cinema, maybe it's me and you, we're there, and we just give everyone a hammer and they're like, why have we been given a hammer? Some people would have seen the movie already, and they're like, oh my god, and other people are just bemused. But when they get there maybe they have to build their own comfy chair.
HANNAH: 33:11 Oh there we go, yeah.
SAM: 33:13 Like they're expecting me to kill someone with a hammer?! Oh no, I just have to make a chair. That's okay.
HANNAH: 33:17 I mean, I would be worried about giving people hammers.
SAM: 33:19 We'll collect them all in before the film starts.
HANNAH: 33:21 We'll put a number on them, right, who's got number 6?
SAM: 33:23 They'd be safely stored during the film.
HANNAH: 33:26 Maybe just like chocolate hammers.
SAM: 33:27 Chocolate hammers, that's less hassle!
HANNAH: 33:29 There we go, there we go, chocolate hammers for all.
SAM: 33:32 I think that would be a nice thing to do.
HANNAH: 33:33 I can't believe they didn't do that!
SAM: 33:35 Come on DVD guys!
HANNAH: 33:37 StudioCanal missed a trick with their marketing campaign.
SAM: 33:40 One last question. A question I like to ask. Do you think this film could or should be longer than 90 minutes?
HANNAH: 33:46 I think it could be. I don't think it should be. I think it's you know, it is perfect just the way it is.
SAM: 33:53 That's the best answer. Well there we have it, You Were Never Really Here is screening at a 90 Minutes or Less Film Festival with live appearance from Jonny Greenwood, playing this amazing yet disturbing soundtrack. A soundtrack that I love and I own on vinyl.
HANNAH: 34:08 Oh so do I, it's a beautiful vinyl.
SAM: 34:10 There's never a right time to listen to it. I started listening to it while I was doing some cooking and some tracks, yeah I was chopping an onion to some of those sort of more upbeat tracks, like yeah chopping the onion, this is good and then some other tracks like 'oh my god put the knife away'. I'm gonna sit down.
HANNAH: 34:24 I'm like that with the Good Time score. I also own that on vinyl and yeah, it's like picking your moments to play this. Imagine at a house party just like sticking that on. Your real friends are the ones who stay!
[90 Mins or Less Outro Bed]
SAM: 34:45 So Hannah where can people read more of your work and find you on the Internet?
HANNAH: 34:48 Oh, you can read my work at Little White Lies website which is lwlies.com. You can follow me on Twitter if you want, you know, I do tweet a lot. I apologise, I don't have anything better to do with my time. I'm @goodjobliz which is a Lars Von Trier reference for those curious. And I'm on our Little White Lies podcast if you fancy hearing me do more of this which is Truth and Movies from all good podcast places.
SAM: 35:14 A truly excellent podcast, great critics on there. I was wondering actually, did you review this film for Little White Lies?
HANNAH: 35:19 I did yeah, I wrote the review/ It is on the littlewhitelies.com and on the poster for the film actually as well. One of my very first reviews I wrote for Little White Lies when I started, and one of the things that I'm still most proud of as a writer. I'm really really proud of my review for that. I'm not just bigging myself up, I did some good writing about this I'll have you all know.
SAM: 35:39 We'll make sure we share that on our social media feeds, I think it'll be good, listen to the pod, read your review, and then watch the film. Come on guys rewatch this movie.
HANNAH: 35:47 Tweet me your opinions about it, let's have a good old chat about Lynne.
SAM: 35:50 Thank you Hannah for being on the podcast and for choosing such a brilliant film.
HANNAH: 35:53 Thank you for having me. It's been a delight to talk about this. One of my favorite movies, favourite director, on this lovely podcast.
SAM: 35:59 Awesome, that's far too kind. Thank you so much. And thank you listeners for listening to our voices very much appreciate that. If you liked what you listened to, then give us a rating, give us a review on iTunes. You can subscribe, you can give a star rating, maybe a couple of words. Be nice to hear from you. It really makes a difference especially for quite a small show like ours. If you want to see what we're up to you can follow us on social media @90MinFilmFest on Twitter and Instagram. We will be tweeting Hannah's review of the movie. And the show was produced by me Sam Clements and Louise Owen. Our music is by Martin Austwick. The show is edited by Luke Smith and our artwork is by Sam Gilbey. We'll be back in a couple of weeks. Goodbye.