The most shocking moment in Thai gangster drama Only God Forgives isn’t one of its bloodstained back-alley murders. It’s when white trash Lady Macbeth Crystal, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, interrupts a polite family dinner to inquire venomously about the state of lounge singer/bar girl Mai (Yayaying Rhatha Phongam) and her “cum dumpster.” It’s not just the vitriol with which she spits the term; it’s how it breaks the silence: Up to that point, Nicolas Winding Refn’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Drive is almost a mute show. “Word is logic. Music is pure emotion,” the director explained. “If I started to explain the scenes too much, then it would falter.”
Set in the criminal underworld surrounding Bangkok’s Thai boxing rings, Only God Forgives charts the burning feud between expat criminal Julian (Ryan Gosling) and self-appointed executioner Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm). It has the same operatic grasp for violence that seared eyeballs in Refn’s critical breakthrough, 2008’s prison biopic Bronson. But to the ear, they are polar opposites. Bronson was animated by Tom Hardy’s constant menacing chatter. For a film in two languages – English and Thai – Only God Forgives is nearly free of dialogue, its tense silences made ominous by Cliff Martinez’s score. A former drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and longtime collaborator with Steven Soderbergh, Martinez called Refn “very sound-centric. It’s not just the music. It’s the crinkling of leather gloves.” He described the long, brooding silences as a strange and rare opportunity. He said, “Few directors have the confidence to cut something in a way that leaves a big gaping hole that would fall apart if the music doesn’t tell the story adequately.” That often reduces the role of a composer to patching over interstitial beats. However, Martinez said, “Nicolas leaves these wide-open spaces, and I never really did these four-minute, five-minute, nine-minute cues until I ran into him.”
Danish native Refn admits that it’s a way to avoid writing dialogue in English, his second language. He said, “If nobody else writes it, sound and music and images become my sole reliance.” When he and editor Matthew Newman started putting the images together, the director recalled, “We said, ‘God, Cliff’s got a real challenge here.'”
Not that Refn left it to Martinez to provide all the soundtrack. Some of the film’s most potent and enigmatic sequences are musical numbers set in karaoke bars. When visiting Thailand to prepare for the film, he said, “I realized in Bangkok there is this extreme love of karaoke. They take it very seriously. You would either go to venues that were very high-end, and you’d have to pre-book rooms where there would be a karaoke machine and a servant, and you could stay there all night and drink, party, and sing songs. Or there were places that open up all night in Chinatown that were mostly Chinese that would be these strange, obscure, neon-lit bars where half the audience would just be sitting there. You wonder, what do they do? How does their life function?” For Refn, “There is a certain religious aspect to that.” No more pointedly so than when Chang, in his rare breaks from bloodily cleansing the streets, serenades the officers under his command. Refn said, “He is giving service to his disciples.”
Casting Chang was one of the toughest and most important parts of Refn’s job. He wanted his performers to bring a stage actor’s sensibilities to the script, tapping into its roots as an epic revenge tragedy. “Every line has a double meaning. When you say, ‘Can I have a glass of water?’ you’re not saying, ‘Can I have a glass of water?’ You’re saying, ‘You are denying me life.'” When he first set the action in Thailand, he expected to find actors immersed in a rich theatrical tradition, common in many Asian nations. Instead, he found there were surprisingly few professional actors. He said, “They do have soap operas, but they produce these very Westernized, pale, non-sexualized men and women.” Instead, he was looking for “that strong-faced, spaghetti Western sensibility.” Enter Pansringarm, a graphic designer turned dance academy founder, who had the stoic, battle-weary look that the director sought. Refn said, “He was in his 50s, and he decided to act three years ago.”
Much of the casting was a similar happy, dark accident. Phongam, who plays the hardened survivor Mai, “was a Thai pop singer who was very popular in her teens, but burnt out,” said Refn. Even Gosling, who only came aboard a few weeks before production, was an unexpected addition. He stepped into Julian’s blood-splattered loafers when Refn’s original casting choice Luke Evans’ shooting commitments on The Hobbit forced him to drop out. Gosling’s entry changed the film entirely. “I knew whoever played Julian, it was going to be a Pandora’s box,” said the director. The pair quickly decided to reverse all the expectations from their work together on Drive. As the unnamed driver, Gosling had been as implacable an agent of justice as Chang. By contrast, Julian is a morally contorted momma’s boy. “That’s a very brave thing for Ryan, to play the weak and impotent and the humiliated, and at the same time having to verbalize that with no dialogue,” mused Refn.
The final component was the addition of Scott Thomas – or as Refn calls her, KST. Initially, he had been casting unknowns in London. He said, “I never thought I could cast anybody with name value who would be willing go to Thailand for very little money.” Then he got an unexpected phone call from KST, who had gotten ahold of the script and become fascinated by the part and its Oedipal overtones. With only vaguely ulterior motives (“My mother’s a huge fan of her, and so’s my wife”), he flew to Paris and chatted with her when the most unexpected of topics came up – Prince. “Did you know her first movie is Under the Cherry Moon?” said Refn, “It was fascinating talking about her with that, rather than her more famous films.” Like Gosling, she saw an opportunity in the part for reinvention. Refn said, “In mythology, especially Norse mythology, women are regarded as the most evil creatures. She said, ‘if I’m to do this, I really need to transform.’ She sent me a picture of herself with long blonde hair, and I thought, ‘Donatella Versace, here we come.'”
There’s still a real cognitive dissonance in seeing Scott Thomas – best known for playing glacial English ladies – reaming her son through the proxy of Phongam. Fortunately, Refn said, “KST has no problem turning on the bitch switch,” but it still took her multiple takes to get her head and her tongue around the “cum dumpster” monologue. Refn credited Gosling with the term “because I certainly didn’t know what that word meant. I asked Ryan, ‘What’s the worst thing you can call a woman in America?'”
It’s the moment he gets asked about the most. Martinez laughed: “That’s the clip they’ll show at the Oscars.”
Refn nodded. “And then they’ll freeze and everyone will applaud.”
Martinez turned to the director. “You will have conquered Hollywood at that moment.”
Only God Forgives opens Friday, July 19, at the Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane as part of the Drafthouse Recommends series. See Film Listings, for review and showtimes.
This article appears in July 19 • 2013.
