Only God Forgives

Saw Only God Forgives (thanks, Nina!) It was a hallucinatory crime film set in the surreal and harsh world of Thai sex clubs. The plot is kicked off when a man murders a hooker and is in return murdered by her father. This act of murder and revenge precipitates a back-and-forth exchange of violence between the man's family and the police, headed by a never-uniformed cop who wields a kind of square-cut sword. The film is morbid and turgid, full of Lynchian pregnant pauses and ominous, inscrutable imagery. Much of the action takes place in a boxing gym lit entirely by red lights, with twisting hallways that seem labyrinthine. The gym is owned by the central character of the film, a brother of the killed man.

His deadly, dragon-woman mother shows up and does her best to manipulate him into acts of revenge. We hope for him to withstand her cruel influence, but his sexual fantasies revolve exclusively around a lack of control. He dreams especially that his fists (not his limp hands, his fists) are bound, held, or even cut off entirely. I get the impression that this removal of limbs is supposed to correlate to a removal of agency and therefore responsibility. It is ickily implied that he has a severe oedipal complex as well.

The cop with the sword exacts harsh justice but this is the only justice we see in the film. Then again, the only mercy we see comes from the protagonist, who is often balking at his mother's orders. Much of the inscrutable symbolism mentioned above revolves around the relationship between the protagonist and the cop. The ending of the film implies an almost saint-like sacrifice resulting directly from this relationship.

On top of all of this, the film is incredible to look at. Harsh reds and blues clash aggressively, endless beautiful women wait placidly in beautiful rooms, ominous rumbling filling the soundtrack. The proximity of sex is not so much erotic as sinister. A very beautiful film, full of gorgeous images and ugly people, it has something on its mind about morality but for me this was secondary to the awesomely arty mood and tone. I liked this film. I feel a bit as though I missed the deeper story it was telling, but do not care.