As mental health gets more open representation in the media, it is important that the depictions of each condition are accurately portrayed. Few movies come to mind that have portrayed a condition such as PTSD as well as in Lynne Ramsey’s 2017 neo-noir psychological thriller You Were Never Really Here. More of a character study than anything else, the film asks what kind of person is unafraid to face violence? With beautiful visuals and a tight story, You Were Never Really Here captures the essence of a man named Joe, played by the ever impressive Joaquin Phoenix, as he dives into the criminal underbelly to find missing and exploited children for those who pay.

You Were Never Really Here follows Joe, a haunted veteran who takes a job locating and rescuing the trafficked daughter of a U.S. Senator. The job seems to be going Joe’s way, as the bodies pile up and the girl Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov) is found alive; however, this is short-lived as two cops come and force Nina away from Joe, nearly killing him in the process. At this point, Joe knows the job stinks and as he tries to find out why, he comes across the body of his handler (John Doman) and, back home, his elderly mother. After two more kills, Joe is at a loss, laying to rest the body of his mother and almost giving up on himself as well. But the job isn’t done, and the image of Nina motivates Joe to find her, which he does, in the house of the Governor of New York. Even though those held responsible for trafficking Nina are dead, the ending of You Were Never Really Here doesn’t pack that regular satisfaction one should feel from a crime movie, and that’s by design. Specifically, it is to inject the viewer with a scrap of the dread Joe experiences on a non-stop basis throughout the film and his life. It is through Joe’s small behaviors and the distinctive structure that Lynne Ramsey gives a faithful portrayal of a character suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
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Joe’s Choices In ‘You Were Never Really Here’ Show his Trauma

Image via Amazon Studios

Our first introduction to Joe in You Were Never Really Here is from behind a plastic “mask” so to speak, as he is attempting to asphyxiate himself. It’s clear that this isn’t necessarily a suicide attempt but more so self-harming behavior. For Joe, this echoes parts of the abuse he faced as a child at the hands of an abusive father. This notion is only briefly showed onscreen in the form of seconds-long flashes. This method is used to communicate the events that contribute to Joe’s trauma throughout You Were Never Really Here including flashes from being in combat and a member of the FBI. In this way, the audience gets a visual tease of the waking nightmare that assaults Joe at seemingly random points throughout the film. It beckons to the flashbulb memories many suffering from PTSD can experience that are brought on for a variety of reasons. Joe isn’t pulling these memories out of a neat filing cabinet inside his head, he’s staring at the most graphic parts of them, sprawled out on a desk, vying for a slot in his conscious mind.

So, why the self harm? Why the brutal violence to rescue abducted girls? Well, to make a complex condition digestible, Joe is reliving a sort of psychological cycle that he finds relief in by re-enacting the events of his traumatic past in the present. This relief comes from the sense of control Joe gets when participating in the behaviors on his terms. In a way, he is working out something unresolved from his experiences. Even some of the less violent behaviors we see Joe perform, such as dropping a knife into the ground near his feet or almost into his open mouth, are indicative of a deep-seated ease with violence and death that only comes after a constant system shock, as can be experienced long after the traumatic event itself. Part of the reason Joe almost lets himself drift into death in the lake where he buries his deceased mother, is due to a finite ending to the constant psychic pain he endures.

Ramsey’s “Less Is More” Approach Hits the Nature of Trauma Head On

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Coming in at 90 minutes, You Were Never Really Here is taught. This might be too taught for a crime thriller in the hands of a director less in control of their powers, but for Ramsey it works perfectly. There is a lack of drawn out on-screen violence in the film which works in its favor. From the jump we are seeing events play out just after or just before they happen but not during. Sometimes there are bursts of the violence occurring but not enough to glorify it, only enough to show you how brutal Joe is. This points to the true nature of trauma in a way that few other films exemplify. When Joe enters both the brothel house initially, and the Governor’s house at the end of the film, the audience only gets glimpses of collapsed bodies moments after Joe’s signature ball-peen hammer comes down on them. Ramsey is telling the audience that to understand PTSD, it isn’t about what others see — it is about what they don’t. We never get fully fleshed out scenes of Joe’s trauma origin, and we never get to see the violent acts either. Even when Joe takes out the henchmen at his mother’s house, we only get one full glimpse of a revolver in Joe’s hand. The violence isn’t drawn out because it isn’t designed to be gratifying to the viewer or Joe. Instead, Ramsey chooses to draw out the scenes immediately following the violence, again portraying how unaffected Joe is by death and his complete detachment from the act of violence itself.

Beyond the way violence is depicted and delivered, the pacing of You Were Never Really Here serves another purpose in illustrating Joe’s inner workings. By the time Joe reaches the Governor’s estate, where Nina is being held, we are primed for the bloody finale. We know what Joe is capable of, and we are ready to see it happen. The audience wants the anti-hero to confront the evil that only a man like Joe can extinguish for good. Just when that is about to happen and the moment comes, all the audience gets is an empty bedroom save the body of the governor. Just like the audience, Joe is at a boiling point, although not the steaming angry boiling point we are accustomed to seeing onscreen. The elements of the film come together at this moment to illustrate the devastation and lack of closure that Joe experiences, and certainly those with PTSD feel as well. Joe rips at his clothes, puts his face in his hands and weeps. That relief, however temporary, Joe feels from usually finding the girl and dispatching her abuser is removed. The despair, loneliness, and sheer weight off Joe’s inner emotional state spill over. It speaks to the constant re-hashing that sufferers of PTSD go through in their minds. The mental stopping points that impress upon them for years of “If only I had done x, if only I got there a minute sooner, if only I could have done something” wears down and can sink an individual, as we saw with Joe in this scene, and carrying until the very final moments of the film.

Nina and Healing from Trauma in ‘You Were Never Really Here’

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The final diner scene in You Were Never Really Here shows a powerful moment Joe has with himself and Nina. We are shown Joe fantasizing about committing suicide, and nobody in the diner taking notice. One of the facets of PTSD is that many affected by it tend to withdraw. The snapshot of Joe’s life that we see throughout the film points to this tendency. After all, Joe’s only permanent force in his life besides his trauma is his mother, and she is taken away from him. People wrestling with PTSD can sometimes feel, as Joe does, that the permanence of death must be better than their day-to-day suffering that goes on inside them, seemingly locked away from anyone around them to understand. When Nina delivers the final line “It’s a beautiful day,” it communicates the idea that those with traumatic experiences, especially when shared, can support each other. Nina doesn’t have to recant to Joe her experiences because Joe was a part of them. Joe saved Nina, and even though she has been through some unspeakable things, she has this outlook ahead that is positive. That is what can help Joe face his demons. That is why that last scene of You Were Never Really Here is so important. It offers a glimpse of what hope looks like for a condition that often seems hopeless to those suffering from it.

There can be a volume written on Lynne Ramsey’s portrayal of trauma in her films. You Were Never Really Here portrays it in a haunting way, getting at its true nature. Many aspects of the film may go unrecognized or be seen with a harsh critical perspective. It is not perfection that You Were Never Really Here strives for in any regard. The movie genuinely tries to offer a viewpoint on the nature of violent trauma, and it achieves this and more. If one person left a theater or turned off their TV after watching this film and gained even a minute increase in the understanding of PTSD, it’s a win. The more conversations that are opened about real subjects that affect the lives of an innumerable amount of people, the better. Movies have always been a medium that does just that, and You Were Never Really Here is a well-made contemporary example of this.