You Were Never Really Here: Joaquin Pheonix Is One Of The Top 30 Artists Active In Any Artform In 20
Hyperbole is to criticism as alcohol is to happiness.
One or two sips is enough to get the old juices flowing and merry the waters.
Chronic misuse however eventually destroys the very fabric of the mechanism.
In 2001, Q Magazine awarded Semisonic’s new album “All About Chemistry” 5 stars. Until a time machine has been invented, Q will have to live with that.
In a genuinely stunning demonstration of the follies of youth, the readers of the same magazine (which I believe is still the UK’s biggest selling) voted Ocean Colour Scene’s “Moseley Shoals” the 33rd best album of all time. “Otis Blue” by Otis Redding finished 100 in the same poll. That was 1998. We have since had 20 years to reflect on this. And I would suggest that people should not be too embarrassed to change their minds.
Yet when Bret Easton Ellis (the author of American Pyscho) labelled Joaquin Pheonix “the greatest screen actor of his generation” in the New York Times last year it was caution itself as opposed to critical evaluation which served as a stopper on my agreement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/t-magazine/joaquin-phoenix.html
After watching You Were Never Really Here yesterday any resistance in this regard has had to give way.
Having been for the best part of the past two decades involved in attempting to form objective assessments of art, I think the time has now come to declare Joaquin Pheonix to be one of the Top 30 Artists in any artform in the world today.
Lynne Ramsey has to take enormous credit for finding something novel to say about male violence by looking at its aftermath and for finding a novel reason to say it. The tone she strikes is as hallucinatory as it is disturbing as she adeptly blurs the line between reality and memory to evoke the devastating impacts of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Johnny Greenwood’s soundtrack makes the strongest case in years for the relevance of Expressionism in art today.
And yet the star that burns the brightest is once again Joaquin Pheonix.
You go to see a play written by an Oxbridge upstart attempting to deal with harrowing subject matter and leave the theatre underwhelmed by quite how pedestrian and derivative it all feels. So for all that writing about child abuse – ultimately – you are left thinking only about writing about child abuse.
You take the recommendation of Morrisey himself to devote one whole hour of your life listening to the new album by The Courteeners, the self-professed “greatest band in the world”, and find yourself asking: “Have I missed something? This is basically just very very shit Oasis. Who went shit after 2 albums. And that was 20 years ago.”
But with the body of post “I’m Still Here” work of Pheonix, you are presented with something extraordinary.
Extraordinary really because it feels completely original and you are left thinking; “I really don’t think I’ve ever seen an actor or a performance quite like this before.”
The level of mastery (no pun intended) that he has of his craft has set fresh standards to everyone. And for that – as we sit back and enjoy his recent output – we have to be extremely grateful for being witness to a new trail enigmatically but effortlessly blazed.
