I’ve written that while I don’t regret posting an honest, blunt response to Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives during the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, I feel badly about hurting Refn’s feelings. On top of which he was entirely gracious about it when we chatted two months ago during a 20th Century Fox holiday party. I’ve previously noted that the pan I wrote is memorialized in Liv Corfixen‘s My Life Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, a Heart of Darkness-like doc about the making of Only God Forgives. It’s basically an honest look at a good filmmaker going through the usual doubt and pain; Corfixen is just as candid in portraying their healthy but less-than-ideal marriage. (Is anyone’s marriage “ideal”?)
The doc will play at L.A.’s Cinefamily between 2.27 and 3.5. Corfixen and Refn will attend on opening night. I think that in all fairness I should also attend and take video and so on.
“Refn seems mildly amused as he reads my review in this clip from the doc. Even with Corfixen saying to him, ‘You brought it upon yourself.’ Provoking strong reactions is, of course, better than causing people to shrug their shoulders or nod out…right?”
Only God Forgives is “world-class in its repulsiveness, and goes way beyond being a time-waster,” I wrote on 7.5.13. “The fumes from this oppressively violent Asian macho bullshit sword-slicing fantasy will sink into your system and your soul and leave you off-kilter — tainted in ways that may be hard to pinpoint at first but are no less real — for weeks after seeing it. Or months. Or eternally.”