Only God Forgives a very delicate, fragile movie. You might not think that, considering the level of graphic violence, but it is. My first viewing of this fever-dream was at the LA Film Festival in June, where a member of the LA Film Fest introduced the movie and told the audience that this was a different type of movie, try to let go and go along for the ride. For the next ninety minutes, I sat in my seat, completely stunned and virtually motionless. I sat with my eyes peeled open, allowing image after image, color after color, wash right over them. Scenes followed other scenes, characters made entrances and exits, and eventually, it all faded to black. For a minute, I wasn’t sure if God Only Forgives was a movie of a dream, or a dream I had, possibly a dream I had just shared with 808 strangers. After the screening, writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn held a Q&A. He said that he liked to think of his movies likes drugs, if Drive was like getting a bunch of really good coke and doing it all in one weekend, then Only God Forgives is like doing LSD. Not the kind that makes you want to run around and have sex, but the kind of LSD that makes you sit in a chair and want to become the chair. Refn admitted that he has never taken psychedelics, and neither have I, but at that moment, I could not have understood a director’s intentions more.

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