Lynne Ramsay is in no rush. She prefers letting 7 years go by in between films than to make a film that isn‘t exactly what she wants. A BEAUTIFUL DAY is an adaptation of the short story “You Were Never Really Here“ by Jonathan Ames. The film is about very traumatised former soldier Joe (Joaquin Phoenix). He doesn‘t want to exist anymore and doesn‘t want to be recognised by anyone but his mother. His flashbacks and suicide plans are kept in check with pills and his violent tendencies are used in his job as a private mercenary. Getting the daughter of a new client out of a brothel isn‘t much of a problem for Joe, but when two cops with silencers take Nina away again it becomes clear that an unusually powerful adversary is behind it. He doesn‘t hesistate for a moment.

Where other revenge films stylize events in order to make the hero‘s emotional wounds and violence more bearable for the audience, Ramsay intensifies Joe‘s inner struggle with all the methods at her disposal. His memories infiltrate the plot with relentless force and Johnny Greenwood‘s score, covering everything from industrial noise to cheesy oldies, supports the destruction. On the other hand, we experience the violence which Joe carries out with a hammer and a gun in an indirect way, we always see the preparations and the result and there are unexpected gentle moments time and again. And so a film emerges with the message that the endlessly spiraling violence keeps going but there are also nice mornings to be had and it is conveyed in a much more haunting way than the stoic Hollywood hero films.

Christian Klose

Translation: Elinor Lewy