Uncomfortably numb watching Only God Forgives

"The worst film I have ever seen. " These words came far too easily out of my mouth last night after fidgeting through the drone chamber that is Only God Forgives. The second collaboration between ubiquitous star Ryan Gosling and acclaimed director Nicholas Winding Refn has really divided opinion since its Cannes debut. For every gushing review ("every scene, every frame, is executed with pure formal brilliance" or "a psychoanalyst's wet dream – when can we see it again?") there appear to be rows of film fans running for the exit or taking to the internet to pithily share their disdain, regardless of any skewed expectations they might have had after watching Drive. 

That's fine, I thought. I'm not afraid of the dark, the symbolic, the more minimal frames of film. Nor do I get squeamish at more harrowing fare such as Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void or Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. Painfully long one-take assaults like those in The Killer Inside Me and Irreversible … of course. I caught the trailer but avoided reviews, determined to watch without prejudice. But when a story is so unappealing and thin that it's barely there, spliced into a gratuitous stream of graphic imagery, you can only emerge after 90 minutes feeling empty and confused.

This morning I awoke in a more forgiving mood, ironically. There is a line that comes to mind from Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind, elsewhere credited to poet Cesar A Cruz, which reads: "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." A noble sentiment and one that bears particular relevance to less narrative-driven forms of film. I do not feel comfortable in life but then again, I welcome disturbance from time to time. Refn is an auteur, as evidenced by this highly stylised and brutal run of films including  the Pusher trilogy, Bronson and Valhalla Rising. His impulse is to experiment and to evoke feeling, and not to pander to an audience. I do admire that conviction, a determination to not play by the rules. Provoking a reaction, positive or negative,  is arguably better than being bland, derivative and forgettable. But self-indulgence at the expense of entertainment?

Admittedly there is clever conceit at play here: making a revenge film without a hero. Smashing preconceptions of a westerner in the east. Gosling has said as much in an interview where, after coming onto the project at the last minute to replace Refn's first-choice actor, he influenced the direction and tone of the project to make it less "corny" (a la Van Damme), even if it meant ignoring his three months of Muay Thai training and "getting his ass kicked". The actor should be commended for trying to avoid stereotypical all-American roles where the handsome good guy saves the day and gets the girl (The Place Beyond the Pines certainly benefitted from his surprisingly quick demise). However this is the second film in which he looks as po-faced, catatonic and disinterested as the rest of us. Does the film benefit from this conceit? Hardly.

Only God Forgives is a morality play, set in the seedy underbelly of Bangkok – all drug dealers, prostitutes, neon-lit back alleys and karaoke bars. The 'sheriff of this town' is Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), the Katana-blade-wielding "Angel of Vengeance" on whom the fate of all rests, it seems. When the brother of Thai boxing club owner Julian (Ryan Gosling) murders a prostitute – in the first 10 minutes of the film – he sets in motion a chain of bloody and despicable events from which few emerge with their lives, let alone any dignity. The big problem? He's not a nice person, so who cares if his death is avenged or not? The same goes for Julian and Chang. Dialogue is so minimal and the backstories largely untouched that the audience can barely bring themselves to invest emotionally in the story. There's no one to root for in this infernal hole.

Refn has referred to Only God Forgives as his fetish film and described how he tried to shoot it like a pornographer. Alarm bells are ringing when you hear a director utter lines like this: "Well, art is an act of violence. It is about penetration, about speaking to our subconscious and our moods at different levels." I would argue that the result is neither engaging nor arousing. Quite the opposite. The violence is relentless and almost laughable: dismemberment, stabbing, eye gouging… If the message is that humans are violent creatures, I got the point in the first 10 minutes.

Then there are the lame and highly inconsequential visual metaphors at play: singing detective Chang entertaining his men with ballads about lost love in the karaoke bar; the dream sequences where Chang appears to come for Julian, like a grim reaper stalking a man with a guilty conscious; the Oedipal relationship between Julian and his mother Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas as Donatella Versace on a very bad day) and that moment where he appears to feel his way back into the womb where he longs to be once again; or the scenes where Gosling, hands tied, watches impotently as prostitute Mai, the girl he asks to pretend to be his girlfriend at a particularly cringeworthy dinner with Crystal, pleasures herself.

These are all fragments of memories from a hugely disappointing night at the cinema. The overriding message, reading very closely but imaginatively between the lines, is that the world has been drained of humanity, and all that is left is retribution with precious little hope of atonement. According to Crystal, Julian apparently killed his father with his bare hands and is "a very dangerous boy". Does he secretly long for someone to put him out of his misery? He has fled to Bangkok, a nether world of sin, to not only evade the authorities but also his past. He's a mummy's boy who always played second fiddle to his older brother and so desperately covets her love it's pathetic but not pitiful. He's the owner of a boxing club that can't fight (remember the bravado of sleeve rolling and prey circling before his pasting at the hands of Chang). He's the man boy who can't be intimate with women. And he's the bully who picks on the innocent (the two men who offer him a drink in the club).

So is this the worst film I have ever seen? Probably not. Only God Forgives, like its main character, has few redemptive qualities, asking barely any questions and certainly giving no meaningful answers. Larry Smith's cinematography may beguile you, Cliff Martinez's score may linger in the air. But you can't help but feel that with more disciplined direction, character development and a stronger spine to the narrative, Refn's 'eastern' could have taken us to a more richly rewarding place. A mesmeric, unsettling yet enjoyable detour in the mould of Lynch, von Trier or Cronenberg at their best. Unfortunately this film will probably be consigned to the pit of perverse and trashy vanity projects that directors and actors live to regret.

Forget the music, there's a Pussy Riot going on

In 21 February 2012 three members of a dissident group called Pussy Riot, dressed in bright balaclavas, neon tights and tops, stormed the Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and performed Mother of God, Put Putin Away. As the title suggests, it was the most defiant of anti-Kremlin protests, a sucker punch to the core of the state-church axis. 

So what prompted them to kick out against the president and his administration? Why not read the strident lyrics of their song to get a clearer picture of what it feels like to be a young woman in Putin's Russia:
 
 Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
 Рut Putin away, put Putin away

Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners crawl to bow
The phantom of liberty is in heaven
Gay-pride sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend His Holiness
Women must give birth and love

Shit, shit, the Lord’s shit!
Shit, shit, the Lord’s shit!

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist

The Church’s praise of rotten dictators
The cross-bearer procession of black limousines
A teacher-preacher will meet you at school
Go to class – bring him money!

Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, better believe in God instead
The belt of the Virgin can’t replace mass-meetings
Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away
 Рut Putin away, put Putin away

The act was condemned as blasphemy by the establishment and an attack on the Russian Orthodox Church, not Putin, by a cross-section of god-fearing citizens. Almost overnight, Pussy Riot had gone from being a punk group to enemies of the state, their images beamed into homes across the world. Two members, Maria 'Masha' Alyokhina and Nadezha 'Nadia' Tolokonnikova, were sentenced to two years in penal colonies for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". Apparently those camps – the former in Perm and the latter in Mordovia – are among the harshest in the country. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova had petitioned to serve their sentences in Moscow, arguing that they wanted to be close to their children, both under six, but the court refused.

Meanwhile the world protested, shouting, tweeting and wearing the slogan "Free Pussy Riot". If the reaction of the Russian press was one of vilification, elsewhere the trio (third member Katja Samutsevich was later released on a suspended sentence) were celebrated as anti-authoritarian heroes. From the Arab Spring to Sao Paolo, millions of people under 30 have been in revolt, fighting for their basic human rights as individuals – particularly their freedom of expression. It quickly became clear that Pussy Riot's cause had struck a chord. As another member of the group uttered to the New Statesman during one of many illicit interviews outside of Russia: "Nobody is a prophet in their own country."

In the wake of the trial, an anti-blasphemy law is close to being approved by the Russian State Duma and it could come into effect next month if accepted by the President and the Upper House. Those who break this censorship law could face imprisonment for up to three years "for desecrating religious sites and paraphernalia". Then there are other pieces of legislation, informally known as the Pussy Riot laws, that forbid the discussion of their protests and distribution of promotional material, covering your face in public and criticising the state while speaking to a foreign journalist. (The latter calls to mind the expulsion of the Guardian's former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding, who branded Russia under Putin "a virtual mafia state". Tolerance is not the president's strong point.)

Pussy Riot are feminists, that much is clear. But are they dangerous extremists? How are their hopes and dreams any different to those of their contemporaries in the West? What do we actually know about their lives and the sacrifices they are willing to make? Thankfully we now have a few answers as the ensuing media circus and show trail has been made into a fascinating HBO documentary by Michael Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, appropriately titled A Punk Prayer.

In it we are presented not only with a fly-on-the-wall account of events as they unfolded – the riot in Red Square, rehearsals, extensive courtroom footage – but we also get a chance to meet some of peripheral figures that have helped to shape the Pussy Riot story: Nadia's supportive father, her husband Piotr (a co-member of performance art group Voira and a key facilitator for this film), Masha's mother, Katja's father (who remembers his daughter devouring the work of leftist French philosophers at a prodigious age), Patriarch Kirill (a man who called Putin's rule a "miracle of god") and his "Carriers of the Cross", one of whom says this about Nadia: "The main one, she is a demon with a brain."

So much has been written and said about Pussy Riot that it can be difficult to pierce through the prevailing narrative – brash group of punks rebel in Russia. Beneath the flurry of web articles you get either comments from those who side with the group and their radical stance, or you get those knee-jerk critics who seem to miss the point.

"There music is just noise. How can you expect anyone to listen?" (It's punk, not pop.)

"Protesting in a church; they got what they deserved." (Did they really?)

Or "stupid girls, attention-seeking – get a job." (Several have one by the way.)

Their choice of protest may have been inappropriate but the attention that they have drawn to Putin's totalitarian regime and the alarmingly repressive nature of society in Russia is not. Making viewers aware of these issues is all that the directors could really have hoped to achieve over 90 minutes as they tried to establish their main characters and each woman's story. Had they not obtained the court footage we would certainly have seen a more investigative piece about a divided society subservient to its state and blinded by its faith. Part two perhaps, when Masha and Nadia are released next year.

A scene from the final moments of the film where Pussy Riot lodge their appeal

In the trials the women come across as being very eloquent, patriotic yet progressive. They have no interest in being pop stars or celebrities. The illusion of the outspoken artist is a seductive one. It makes good headlines. But it rarely spurs people into action; the kind that draws hundreds of thousands of people out on the streets to protest your innocence. As the film progresses you quickly come to appreciate their irrepressible spirit, their conviction to stand up for what they believe in and their will to inspire others to follow suit. "Our aim is to change humanity, to free society from prejudices and stereotypes," we are told. But "only radical revolutionary action can change anything".

For co-director Lerner, the importance of a Pussy Riot in our times – in our cities – is clear. "I think we are experiencing a new wave of punk feminism around the world," he told the Guardian. "What has happened under Putin is an increased radicalisation of nationalism in Russia. It a story about the Orthodox church as an icon of nationalism. They see the group as an attack on Russia. But Pussy Riot don't want to destroy Russian society, they want to improve it. The longer they are incarerated and persecuted the stronger their message."

'Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer' is showing at the Rich Mix, London, on Thursday 27 June at 8pm. This will be followed by a Q&A with Mike Lerner. 

The Man of Steel needs to lighten up

Faster than a speeding bullet to the brain… Zack Snyder's bloated reboot is a confused and charmless affair

This is hard work: Superman (Henry Cavill) knows how we feel

Friday night is the prime opportunity to take a break from our ourselves. To let our fantasies run wild, as the child within comes out to play, if only for one night. The perfect time to watch a superhero film, you might think. Man of Steel, Watchmen  director Zack Snyder's Superman reboot, in partnership with executive director Christopher Nolan, is one of the most eagerly anticipated blockbusters of the past few years, due in no small part to a series of dramatic yet lofty trailers. Nolan of course is the big-screen auteur who breathed new life into the Batman franchise by using extended narrative and intrigue to probe the soul of the caped crusader. 

For Nolan it is about more than good vs evil, or staging an epic action sequence. And like him, Snyder is using a superhero to ask big questions about the people he serves; and daring to use a big studio picture to meditate on challenging themes like humanity, identity and morality. This is an admirable approach to filmmaking that can resonate with a broad audience, but only if depth comes before complexity and entertainment trumps introspection. As with the first part of Nolan's trilogy, Man of Steel is an origin story that attempts to establish the hero as an outsider struggling to fit in; the "alien" trying find his place in this world. So far, so good.

Film editors have become so skilled at pushing our buttons over one or two minutes of a trailer, it's almost given that a film like this will attract a broad audience. But would the feature-length presentation hold our attention? On paper, things did look promising: you have the distinguished cast (Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Amy Adams and Diane Lane among others), chiseled Brit Henry Cavill, a rising star looking every inch the all-American hero, whether it's hoodie up, shirt off or cape on (he roars like a man too); a loathsome villain played by Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road, The Runaways, The Iceman, Take Shelter), a man capable of complex and edgy performances of real menace; a director with enough clout and tact to handle the pressure that comes with tackling a pop culture icon; and a producer who knows a thing or two about comic book adaptations. How could it go wrong? 

Well it did. Superman's outfit isn't the only thing that is darker this time round. What transpired over those two and a half hours was a sombre and angst-riddled drudge through the mythology of the "S", pumped up with some of the worst excesses of modern day Hollywood: the 3D gimmickry (a distraction and nothing more); a glut of CGI you can't believe; hyperactive camerawork (the fight scenes were a blur); hollow cameos from capable actors such as Laurence Fishbourne (as Perry White) that barely registered; absurd imagery (who could forget Cavill suspended in the sea beside a whale after saving the riggers); odd depictions of reality (remote tribespeople tuning into General Zod's threatening broadcast on a flatscreen TV in their hut); and the ridiculous script (the premise of a planet-saving collision between two phantom cores stills puzzles).

No one should expect wit and wisdom in a superhero film. Quite the opposite actually: snappy dialogue people can relate to. This was sadly lacking. All that nonsense about the codex stolen from Krypton that Jor-El places in the baby capsule… Honestly, who cares? Then there's that truly cringeworthy exchange between Diane Lane and a young Clark after he struggles to come to terms with his new powers and subsequently flips out at school, locking himself in a store cupboard. "The world's too big, mom," he cries. "Then make it smaller," she whispers. Predictably, more schmaltz follows. The script also overplays the importance of the fact that Superman has two fathers. Of course he feels torn between two worlds; his ancestry and his upbringing. Both ultimately make him the man he is and yet we have to endure countless minutes of exposition on what is a pretty obvious dilemma. 

Russell Crowe's Jor-El holds court in the tedious prologue on Krypton and we are treated to musings like this on man's destiny and the importance of sacrifice: "What if a child dreamed of becoming something other than what society had intended? What if a child aspired to something greater?" Act one and the movie is already becoming far too ponderous as viewer begins to feel burdened by the weight of the world. Meanwhile Kevin Costner is on familiar ground playing the earnest and dutiful father figure Jonathan Kent, who tries to shield his son from the sense of fear and alienation that threaten to consume him. Lines like this thicken the air: "You just have to decide what type of man you want to grow up to be, Clark. Whoever that man is, good character or bad, he's going to change the world." Effectively a variation on Uncle Ben's "With great power…" speech from the Spiderman story. I am all for a little gravitas when we are talking about the fate of the world and how that rests in the hands of a boy that would be "god", but on the back of Russell Crowe's monologues it is just too much.

So where does like leave us? Barely entertained, that's for sure. If this film is about hope, sadly I lost mine well before the second act. I was so excited about seeing an old friend in new clothes and came to the cinema wanting to believe. Instead, I quickly found myself longing for the heart and humour of the Christopher Reeve era (episodes one to three anyway). No, this is not moist-eyed nostalgia. Charm matters in action cinema and superhero franchises such as Iron Man and X-Men prove that you can entertain an audience while still having darker, more inquisitive passages. Man of Steel takes itself far too seriously so it's desperately hard to feel the thrill of superhuman ability because we are too busy worrying about the burden of it all. And when we are given a moment of levity, it's a lame gag in the final few minutes. Army officer to her colonel as Superman flies off: "I just think he's kinda hot." 

In one of several interviews to promote the film, veteran Fishbourne was asked why Superman is still relevant and he replied: "I think he's just as important as any other superhero in our culture. We need someone to believe in. He gives us a way of expressing a need to do more: to protect, and defend, to excel and inspire." Actions usually speak louder than words so why not concentrate on telling a good story and leave the psychoanalysis to the professionals. Let's hope that in the next installment the script writers adopt a lighter touch and celebrate the gifts instead of dredging the conflict within.

Preview: Between the Lines/High Tech, Low Life

Between the Lines, a three-day programme of talks, debates and films about documentaries, kicks off this Friday at the Rich Mix in London. A collaboration between the Frontline Club and Dochouse, this event explores the challenges facing filmmakers, investigative journalists and citizen reporters in the new media age. Themes include subjectivity vs objectivity, freedom of expression vs integrity of sources and authenticity vs creative interpretation. A host of respected figures will take part including Life in a Day director Kevin McDonald, Occupy Wall Street Livestreamer Tim Pool, Truthloader editor Dan Bell and head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, Dorothy Byrne.

Last year Sundance director Robert Redford told the BBC that documentaries had replaced newspapers as the media's main source of investigative journalism. Compare the falling public confidence in media ethics post-Leveson and Savile with the breakthrough international success of personal truths on film such as 5 Broken Cameras, Central Park Five and The House I Live In, and he may just be on to something. 

A documentary used to be niche viewing: either eye-opening discoveries while channel-flicking on the sofa – think moments with Attenborough – or esoteric VHS/DVD pass-arounds for curious culture vultures (La Chappelle's Rize, for instance). Over the past 15 years, these more informative features have become box office sensations: Bowling for Columbine, March of the Penguins, Enron, An Inconvenient Truth, Inside Job, Super Size Me, Catfish, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Man on Wire, Senna, The Imposter; the list is long, lucrative and littered with awards.

Then there is Rodriguez. When a film about a largely unknown musician from Detroit becomes an international success – from Letterman to Leno, BAFTA to Oscar – you know that something extraordinary is happening. Of course, some things never change. People like to hear passionate stories about other people, particularly the underdog. But there is also a growing demand for more depth and authenticity in the things that we choose to spend our time and money on.

Unquestionably, it is technology that has made us so receptive and eager to consume knowledge about the world we live in. We share much more of ourselves as well: mobile phones and digital cameras have democratised storytelling. The age-old corridors of power in mass media – TV, radio, press, government – are being eclipsed by social media and citizen reporters are only too eager to give their version of events.

We crave unmediated information and real-time news from the street. Power lobbies are being torn apart and everyone is accountable (in theory). Beyond simply being another form of news gathering, the documentary as a medium provides a way for these frontline journalists to generate awareness for their particular cause and to build a compelling case over time – something that newspapers rarely have the time to do.

Censorship is the great enemy of these truth tellers. So it's only fitting that one of the films being shown on Thursday 28 February in the build-up to Between the Lines is Steve Maing's High Tech, Low Life, an absorbing tale of two dissident bloggers in China, very different characters from two different generations, and yet united in their determination to breach "the Great Firewall", which threatens to shackle the world's largest population. 

Updated

Vegetable seller Zola is a restless, ambitious 27 year old, keen to make a name for himself as a reporter as he covers stories about houses being torn down, suspected murder and public acts of defiance. In one scene he argues with his expectant parents and proclaims that, "the individual comes first, not the country." As he builds his following, his persona – even making an appearance at the World Blogging Forum in Romania – you can tell that he craves the spotlight. But beneath the bravado there is a tacit acceptance of the danger that he puts himself in. 

​An unusually pensive Zola manages to evade the authorities on his way to the World Blogging Forum in Romania

Meanwhile, Tiger Temple, an activist in his late 50s, is a more meditative and low-key figure, committed to understanding China’s tumultuous history while reporting on the plight of farmers in the agricultural hinterland. He considers democracy to be education when dealing with the authorities and generously adds that "we're learning from each other". For him, China suffers from the same debilitating disease that took hold during Mao's dictatorship. "On the surface, things seem better," he explains, "but people still feel oppressed. Tricked by economic growth. Distracted. Complacent because they feel powerless. They ask: 'What am I supposed to do?'" 

Tiger Temple: "In the meantime I will do what I do best: ride my bike. And if I have any thoughts I will write them down and share them"

Zola is less conciliatory. When he finally comes face to face with Tiger at a blogging conference he proclaims, "Being selfish is the first step to conquering the communist mindset." It's a fascinating moment. The viewer is never prompted to take sides but you wonder which approach is the right one for these times. Tiger is then unceremoniously driven out of Beijing while the party conference is held.

At the end of the film we are told that, "In 2012, after widespread social unrest and political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa, the Chinese government created a new agency called the State Internet Information Body, to prevent disruptions to social stability." The government condemns such agitations as "acts of vanity" and warns that those seeking parallels with the events of the Middle East will "be sorely disappointed".

Unless the people speak out, that is. There is a place for both Zola and Tiger in this fight for democracy and it's going to take many more fearless citizens like them to bring change against a fiercely authoritarian government. Watch this film: it gives a timely reminder of the power and defiance of the human spirit.

And please do spare some time to visit Between the Lines. There are free screenings and events on Saturday…​

​'High tech, Low Life' will be shown at 7.15pm at Riverside Studios on Thursday 28 February. This screening will be preceded by 'Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei, a short film about China’s most famous dissident artist.