Man! Or should I say “Men!” I haven’t seen a film this messed up since Mother! “What was so messed up?” you might ask. Gee, I dunno. The suicide who blamed his wife before jumping to his death? The naked guy with the open wounds hanging out on a stranger’s lawn? Or, maybe, just maybe, the slow-moving conga line of Men giving birth.
I feel confident that this is a film I cannot spoil. How am I confident? Because this film is all about tone. It’s all about anxiety and vulnerability; you cannot really spoil these things because they have to be experienced first-hand in order to understand them. The conga line of birthing males is just an odd detail in a nightmare about isolation.
Is Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley) living a nightmare? I think that’s a reasonable interpretation of what I saw. Harper was married but one day she decided she’d had enough of husband James (Paapa Essiedu). During his suicide drop, he stared at her while rushing past her window. This was only, of course, after fully putting the onus on her for his actions. Wow, there’s some awesome GOP thinkin’ right there, huh?
And, fittingly, this film is entitled Men if only to point out every man in the film is bad news for our heroine. Trying to escape the city and her intertwined depression, Harper decides on a holiday in an estate several hours outside of London. One awkward home introduction later, Harper is exactly where she wants to be: alone and away and undisturbed.
The trouble begins in a tunnel. While out for a stroll in the country, Harper finds a gulley. Climbing down the ravine, she follows the path to an abandoned tunnel. She plays eerie echo games, a portent of the disturbing events on the horizon. Suddenly there’s a silhouette at the other end of the tunnel. Harper doesn’t know what to make of it, but when it starts running towards her, flight of “flight or fight” kicks in. She loses her way and has to climb out of the ravine, immediately encountering what appears to be an abandoned barracks. As she passes
the barracks and walks into an open field, she senses that the chase has stopped (if it ever really started) and feels relief. She turns back to get a picture of the abandoned building only to find there’s a naked man with open scars in front of it.
Well that’s not something you see every day. Or, God help me, I hope you don’t see that every day. It’s something I don’t see every day; I’ll say that much. And this is where the –for lack of a better word- adventure begins.
Men is not a fun film.
Men doesn’t have anything good to say about Men.
Men is almost certainly metaphoric, but I couldn’t say for sure what the metaphor means.
What Men leaves is an acute feeling of vulnerability, of isolation, of a “me-against-the-world” type of war. It couldn’t be a more perfect release timing-wise as May, 2022, is the month in which the US Supreme Court essentially announced it would be overturning Roe v. Wade. Want to make women feel vulnerable, isolated, and insecure? That’s a great place to start.
Men is a weird, weird film. It feels both a bit too confusing and too sensationalistic to approach true greatness and yet Men is certainly a considered piece of art. Writer/director Alex Garland knew exactly the film he wanted to make and I doubt very much he could have landed a better heroine for guiding us through the controlled insanity than Jessie Buckley.
Now let’s never watch this film again.
Harper asks a question un-buried
From the tribulations she’s carried
As she heads towards a cliff
She queries: “What’s the dif
Between a nightmare and being a woman married?”
Rated R, 100 Minutes
Director: Alex Garland
Writer: Alex Garland
Genre: WTF?!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who like to discuss symbolism
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Men
