Men
A24When something is so engrained into your reality, how can it possibly change? That is the question at the center of Alex Garland’s Men, exploring answers both literally and figuratively. It’s a movie-as-Rorschach-test, and like the multi-facted monster that haunts every scene, it spawns a variety of interpretations. The set-up is as familiar as it is chilling. In the film’s opening moments, Harper (Jessie Buckley) stares numbly out of her apartment window, blood dripping from her nose. Moments later, her husband, James (Paapa Essiedu), plummets past her line of sight and to his death. Without a single line of dialogue it’s clear that something terrible has led to this moment. The rest of the film slowly reveals the hows and whys.
The trouble starts when Harper retires for a brief getaway in the countryside, trying to recover from the loss of her husband. From the very beginning, she finds herself confronted by the various men in this small town, all of whom are played by Rory Kinnear. In fact, Kinnear plays more than half of the cast onscreen, closing in on Harper until the film takes on the claustrophobic tension of a stage play. The spotlight keeps narrowing until there is nowhere to run, illuminating the rotting core of what has poisoned Harper’s existence.In its first two acts, Men is an incredible achievement, capturing the fear and tension a woman can feel while alone. There are images and moments that seem straight out of a nightmare, even in the most banal situations. Like his previous effort, Annihilation, Garland has the uncanny ability to turn idyllic settings into the grotesque. In this case, nature isn’t an escape when you’re being followed by a stranger. A house offers no comfort or protection when locks can’t keep danger at bay. And, of course, no community can truly be welcoming if they dismiss whatever you have to say.
While the film is in this primal state, it excels, building dread with the tiniest details: a shadow out of place, the turn of a head or the trembling of a hand. A phone screen flickers, showing distorted images. A mask is placed where it shouldn’t. Even when Harper is the only one in frame, there is the sneaking suspicion that something is hiding behind her. But why? As the story alternates between her current situation and flashbacks of her last conversation with James, the reasons become much clearer. Of course the reasons intersect with that central question about reality. This is where the film becomes a struggle. Is Men strictly from Harper’s point of view, or is it focusing on something larger – a commentary on everyone’s collective reality? Kinnear is playing every man Harper encounters in town, but she never notices and it’s never explained. Is it because she is blind to her what is “haunting” her, or is the film making a larger statement? That all men are inherently abusive? Prone to entitlement and violence? That all men are the same?
It’s clear that Men was constructed to strike that particular nerve, but what makes it stand out is that every reaction to it holds some truth. As a metaphor its symbolism has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, down to the choice of its title; it could even be brushed off as an annoying “Get Out for white women”. On the other hand, if it’s simply about one woman’s confrontation with her guilt and grief after the death of her husband, it depicts something much more subtle and unsettling: coming directly face-to-face with what threatens to destroy someone, then realising it’s much more vulnerable, pathetic and smaller than she could imagine. Does that mean it’s going to stop? Absolutely not. In Men, it is as unyielding as the spread of weeds, lifecycles of death and birth, or the myths believers choose to justify their actions.
“It’s not the last time this is going to happen,” Harper tells her friend Riley (Gayle Rankin) at one point. “I’ll just have to live with it.” In this context, the film becomes a fable that packs quite a wallop. Aside from Garland’s directing and writing, which takes some left-hand turns, there is Rob Hardy’s lush cinematography of the countryside, making it as foreboding as it is beautiful. There is also the dark and mournful score by frequent Garland collaborators Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, which features male vocals stretched into yearning feminine wails. However, the crux of the film is Buckley and Kinnear two-handing a variety of difficult scenes. Buckley’s handling of the material is particularly interesting, turning Harper into the inversion of the final girl. Although horror conventions would call for her to react to her situations with fear or blind rage, it’s her assertiveness that gets her into trouble. By the end of the film she isn’t a victim but a witness, shading her performance with compassion, stoicism and eventually a tired resignation as she faces what could be framed as her “ultimate evil” and accepts it for what it is.
Needless to say, Kinnear shoulders multiple characters and makes each one unique, not only broadening his rage but pushing specific boundaries where no other actor has ventured before. If you think his infamous performance in Black Mirror’s “The National Anthem” was without vanity, this is further proof that he’s willing to take risks. He effortlessly alternates from warm to disinterested, familiar to enigmatic or threatening to helpless within seconds, and in some moments is acting with no one but himself as a scene partner.
The tagline of Men is “What haunts you will find you.” This is explored at full tilt, depicting something that is so unyielding it constantly turns into something else, coming up with new ways to “get in” and wreck havoc. Love it or hate it, there is no doubt that there are plenty of layers to peel back and symbolism to sort through. There is even a sense of humor and meta-ness to it all, from the timing of its title card to the final credits, revealing that this scathing critique on men was brought to you by – you guessed it – a lot of men.
Like the rest of the film, that gives you plenty to think about.