Cult-Movie Review: Only God Forgives (2013)

Only God Forgives (2013) is a mesmerizing and visually-stylish film from Drive (2011) director Nicolas Winding Refn, It doesn’t seem quite right to call it an action film, although there is plenty of violent and bloody action involved. 

And it isn’t quite right to term Only God Forgives a horror film either, though at times the movie descends into very dark territory and the dialogue explicitly discusses meeting “the devil.”

In this case, that devil -- or perhaps God – could be a sword-wielding, karaoke-singing policeman named Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm).

If the description makes the character sound weird or comical, I apologize.

Chang is actually pretty…chilling.

He veritably glides through life (in slow-motion photography, usually…) as if to him, normal time is somehow slowed down. He thus comes across as something like a shark swimming with -- and preying on -- guppies.

He’s on a different plane all together.

In terms of categories, Only God Forgives feels a bit like a (good) David Lynch film, though with strong overtones involving Eastern spiritualism. The film is also dedicated to the late Alejandro Jodorowsky, a visionary whose surreal approach to narrative film also seems to inform Refn’s choices here as a director.

Only God Forgives lingers on dark, disturbing visions of human ugliness, and involves, on a broad level, a great deal of symbolic meaning. Color -- particularly a hellish red -- informs much of the tale, and the film’s lead character, played by Ryan Gosling, is frequently linked to symbolism involving his hands.

So what does it all mean?

If I had to say for certain, Only God Forgives seems to concern the notion that none of us can escape judgment for our actions, even if, at some point, we are truly sorry for them.

Without passion, mercy, or even -- at times -- changing his expression, Chang punishes several characters in the film for their illegal and immoral behavior. And there’s simply no pleading your case once this character sets his draconian eyes upon you. There is no escaping his justice.

You can do what you think is right to make things better, but the sin isn’t erased, in Chang’s judgment, and he’s eventually going to take his pound of flesh.

He’ll excise it with his very sharp sword

Punishment (or is it justice?) comes swift…and final, and Only God Forgives -- lyrical in visuals and reserved in dialogue -- seems to be about the human struggle to be truly good.

In a world of crime, lust, loneliness, jealousy, appetites unfulfilled and even madness, that’s not such an easy task.

But don’t expect those excuses to make a difference when you stand face-to-face with the one who stands in judgment of you…

“I’m sure he had his reasons…”

In Bangkok, an American (and psychotic…) named Billy commits the brutal rape and murder of a young prostitute after noting that he wants to “fuck a 14 year old.”  The police catch him, and the enigmatic Lt. Chang allows the girl’s father to beat Billy to death.

Afterwards the merciless Chang chops off the grieving father’s arm with a sword for the crime of allowing his daughter to be a hooker. 

Later, at home, however, Chang shows real love and gentleness towards his young daughter. Oddly, Chang is also an accomplished karaoke singer.

Billy’s brother, Julian (Ryan Gosling), meanwhile, manages a martial arts/boxing club in the city, and plots revenge against the prostitute’s father. But when Julian learns what crime Billy was guilty of, he does not kill him. Instead, he backs off. 

Julian’s act of humanity angers his mother, Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), a ruthless drug runner. She comes to Bangkok to identify Billy’s body, but also to run a guilt-trip on Julian for not avenging his brother’s murder. Crystal then undertakes the mission, sending hit-men to kill the prostitute’s father.

Chang soon bloodily eliminates all the assassins, and traces them back to Crystal.

Fearing for her life, Crystal throws Julian under the bus, telling Chang how dangerous and unstable he is. 

At the same time, Julian goes to Chang’s house to kill him, and learns that he has a young daughter living there.

“Now’s your chance to do something.”

A kind of creeping psychic heaviness suffuses Only God Forgives. Refn’s camera takes these long, slow, almost diabolical prowls down mysterious red-lit hallways and corridors, all accompanied by ominous music.

The feeling isn’t so much that this is “real” Bangkok, but that the film is a tragedy or passion-play being played out in the anterooms and corridors of Hell itself. The movie successfully creates the impression that behind every corridor, and around every turn, something sinister awaits.

And that might very well be the film’s view of the human psyche.

For instance, Billy is a bastard who kills an under-age girl just because he can. There is no motive except that he is, well, evil. 

And Crystal is something much, much worse: a vile person who bends others to her will, and shows no loyalty to anyone in her life, even her only living son. Crystal possesses no milk of human kindness, and thus seems a modern variation on Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth.

Julian seems like a wonderful human being compared to his mother and brother, but he isn’t, really, and that’s the film’s subtle point.

Only God Forgives is thus about Julian’s judgment day, and the audience is provided visuals and background details to help us understand the character better. We learn that Julian was never really loved by his mother, as she tells him, though she resisted the urge (at least) to terminate him in the womb. Crystal also convinced him to murder his father with his “bare hands,” which Julian did.

Julian’s hands are vitally important, as the visuals establish again and again. Julian uses them to win fights, and holds them back -- in restraint -- when watching beautiful dancers, like the alluring Mai. The implication is that he doesn’t trust himself enough not to hurt the women in his life.  

At another key moment late in the film, Julian inserts his hands inside the fatal sword wound on his mother’s abdomen, as if literally reaching back into the womb that nurtured him and trying to find some tangible evidence of the love that should have been there. He digs around, trying to find a sense of comfort in the physical connection to the dead matriarch, but locating none.

These hands are indeed the key to Julian’s soul (and crimes…), and at film’s ends, his hands are sacrificed -- as foretold in a vision -- to Chang.  That’s his punishment. 

Or could it be his salvation?

In myth and psychology, the hands can represent a number of things, from balance (ying and yang), to good judgment, to a relationship with authority, even. When Chang severs Julian’s hands in the film’s final battle, the act seems to relate to all these attributes.

In the course of Only God Forgives, for instance, Julian loses his relationship with his family members – including his mother -- thus he also loses his hands. He has also shown poor judgment in his selection to murder his father, and, again, pays for that crime with his hands…with his very interface with the world itself.

There’s another way to parse the film’s final punishment, as well, and that’s why I mentioned salvation above.

Julian (presumably) survives after Chang’s punishment, after the severing of the two hands by sword. This could be -- after a fashion -- a weird act of both punishment and mercy on the judge’s part.

Chang cuts off the very things that Julian hates: the hands that hurt women, that killed his father, and that sought love in the wrong places. Julian has seen excised the very thing that makes him a monster to the rest of the world.  He has been judged, and judged brutally, but perhaps now he can find peace of a sort.

Julian has spent the whole film “not” touching women, like Mai, and now he can do so without fearing his darkest impulses, without fearing that he could be another Billy, or commit murder again.  Having no hands frees him from being a monster like his other family members. In a sense, now he is truly free.

There’s very little dialogue in Only God Forgives, but you likely won’t miss it. The film is mesmerizing in visual terms and unforgettable in its pervasive fire-and-ice approach to coloring. Everything seems to be either red/hot or blue/cold, possible representations for the two main characters: dangerous Julian, and unflappable (but deadly…) Chang.

And what are we to make of Chang? A man who stands in brutal judgment of all others? 

Well, despite his fearsome nature, there is a distinct purity about Chang. We really do have to wonder if he represents the Devil, after all, or God. 

Consider that he stands in judgment and punishes those who are indeed monstrous. He doesn’t second-guess his conclusions, either. It is thus no wonder he can be kind to his daughter, sleep peacefully at night, or sing like an angel at the karaoke bar. He is righteous, unyielding, and unquestioning in his pursuit of justice.

In other words, Chang judges, but is not judged.

On the other hand, as a movie critic, it is my responsibility to “judge,” I guess one could conclude. And what I judge so frightening about Chang is his crystal clarity.

We can tell ourselves all kind of lies and rationalizations about why we do things, but when it’s time to meet either God or the Devil, I suspect, such excuses don’t carry much weight.

The title of this movie is Only God Forgives.

But what if even God doesn’t?