Movies: Men
Wooooooo baby! Alex Garland's absurdist horror film is created to be divisive. It's a movie that has a dramatic tonal shift in the final third that will enrapture some, disgust others, and make still others roll their eyes. But since it's a controversial and bizarre film about misogyny, I knew I was gonna like it because that's my bread and butter. Here are a few other blog entries I've written that review similar films:
This review of Men is going to go into detailed spoilers, so I would recommend reading only if you've already seen the movie, or you don't plan to see it but want to know what happens anyway.
Men stars Jessie Buckley as Harper Marlowe, a woman recovering from her husband's death by suicide. She rents a beautiful, old house in the countryside in England from Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), a nice enough if awkward man who clumsily asks if her "hubby" will be joining her. Just the first sexist microaggression Harper experiences in a movie filled with examples of contempt for women.
Harper takes a walk in the countryside the next day and discovers a tunnel. As she happily explores the tunnel, and its ability to cause echoes, she sees a figure at the other end. She hastily walks away, but realizes that a naked man is following her. Later, she sees the same nude man in the garden of her rented house. She calls the police and they arrest him.
She also visits an old church, where she has an encounter with a rude young boy who calls her a "fucking bitch" for not playing hide and seek with him. Then, in one of the most distressing scenes of the movie, she has a conversation with a priest who implies that she drove her husband to suicide.
Throughout all this, we see flashbacks to her relationship with her husband, James (Paapa Essiedu)...a man clearly suffering from mental illness who threatens to kill himself if Harper leaves him. James is an asshole. He doesn't just threaten suicide, he clearly states that he will do it "because then you will have to live with it." When Harper says that James is scaring her, he becomes enraged and says that he is scared of her before punching her in the face. Harper kicks him out of their high rise flat and James goes to the flat above theirs, pushes his way in, and throws himself out the window to his death.
It's pretty clear that no sane viewer is supposed to empathize with James even though he is obviously not in his right mind. Harper is 100% in the right when she calls out his suicide threat as manipulative. A person can be mentally unwell and also emotionally and physically abusive. But, it's also understandable that Harper harbors massive guilt about what happened. So when the priest tells her she's right to feel guilty, Harper gets up and tells him to "fuck off" and walks away. Atta girl!
Oh, did I mention that the naked man, the boy, and the priest are all played by Rory Kinnear? As are multiple men in a bar and a police officer. Every man except James is played by Kinnear. The symbolism is pretty obvious: they're allllll the same. AMIRITE LADEEZ? But more on that later.
After learning at the local pub that the naked man has been released, Harper goes home and the movie shifts tones into an absurdist, gruesome home invasion film. The naked man tries to break into the house and Harper stabs him in the arm. He removes his stabbed arm through the mail slot, cutting his arm in two. Next thing you know, the boy who wanted to play hide and seek is in the kitchen...with an arm cut in two. Then the priest is in the bathroom, putting his disgusting sliced arm on Harper's neck and being the most perverted skeezebag on the planet, rapturing over Harper's "slit" and telling her "this is the power you have over me". She stabs him and runs, trying to get away in her car, only to run over Geoffrey in the road. Geoffrey gets up, steals the car, and begins chasing Harper with it.
Then it gets REALLY weird.
The naked man, now with a sliced arm, broken leg, and pregnant belly shows up. He gives birth to the boy, who gives birth to the priest, who gives birth to Geoffrey, who gives birth to James. This shit is wild. Very Cronenbergian. It was also at this point that I realized the man's injuries (sliced arm and broken leg) were the same ones James experienced when he fell to his death. James and Harper sit on the couch together and Harper asks "what do you want from me?" and James says "your love". The next and final scene is Harper's friend Riley (Gayle Rankin) showing up at the house and discovering the wrecked car and Harper sitting outside in a bloody dress. We never see what "really" happened. End of movie.
SO. Let's break down some symbolism here.
1) Rory Kinnear playing all the men: I took this to be symbolic of the different types of shitty men. Geoffrey is the "nice guy" who is slightly able to hide his contempt for women, but it's still there lurking beneath his corny jokes and awkward smile. The priest is a victim-blamer and molester/rapist. The boy is just a straight up rude-ass kid who isn't being taught differently. The police officer is, well, ACAB. The naked man...I'm not so sure. He has a connection to nature, so maybe it's men's "natural" instincts or nature's way of being brutal to all beings.
2) The birthing scene: basically, this is saying that shitty men beget shitty men. It's a cycle, and each type of man supports and encourages the other types. I came up with a theory years ago during the whole Aziz Ansari scandal where I realized that the many, many men who do very mildly shitty things (like Aziz) form the base of the pyramid that supports the fewer men who do worse things....all the way up to the top of the pyramid where even fewer men do even worse things, like Harvey Weinstein being a serial predator. So even if what Aziz did was not illegal or "not that bad", men like him allow for other men to do worse things. Not exactly the most original theory, I know, but certainly true. And that's what I took from this grotesque birthing scene.
3) The severed arm: so, this was a small thing, but when Harper stabs the man's arm, which is coming through the mail slot, *he* is the one to pull his arm out, severing it in the process. And this injury is congruent to what happened to James. So, if people want to say Harper drove James to suicide...well, he actually chose to do it himself, just as the man chose to pull his arm back out. Harper may have stabbed him (and reasonably so), but the man is the one who hurt himself. I read this as the director saying that James is responsible for his own choices.
4) Harper's attitude and expressions at the end of the film: as the violence escalates in the final third of the movie, Harper is of course incredibly frightened and confused. She is screaming, running around, trying to hide and protect herself. But the men are relentless...they follow her and shape shift. But this is a long-ass final third and the longer it goes on, the more...exhausted and "over it" Harper becomes. Jessie Buckley's facial expressions rearrange themselves into that face you make when a man starts explaining your own career to you. Just a flat, unimpressed, slightly disgusted countenance. Misogyny is so relentless and so grotesque that for many women, fear and anger shift into disdain and boredom. By the time Harper's husband is reborn through these men, she just doesn't give a fuck any more. He's no different from the rest of them...in fact, James is the only man who physically hurts Harper in the movie. The shape-shifting men throughout the movie chase and threaten her, but they never physically harm her. Only James did that when he hit her. Despite his apparent vulnerability, he is in many ways the worst of them all. And he was the one who was supposed to love Harper the best.
5) What happened at the end?: Harper's friend Riley finds her covered in blood outside the house, so something happened. But did it all happen exactly as we saw it? Or did Harper have a mental breakdown and perhaps kill her nice-but-awkward host, Geoffrey? Or maybe she murdered the policeman. We will never know. But I'm so very glad it wasn't definitively revealed that it was "all in her head". If that had been revealed, this would be another "bitch goes crazy and kills people for no reason" movie. Since the ending remains a mystery, we can choose to believe that Harper was righteous in whatever she did to earn that blood on her dress.
So, final thoughts: Men is a film about the grotesque absurdity and relentlessness of misogyny. Sexist men, even ones who "aren't so bad", support and encourage worse men. They cover for one another. They conspire, whether they know it or not, to discredit women and victim-blame them. Misogyny is so common and so relentless, that many women go from fearful to exhausted. They burn out on it. Misogyny takes beautiful things, like nature, solitude, and love between husband and wife...and turns them into something dangerous and twisted. When it comes to misogyny, indeed, all men are the same. Different shades, different levels...but underneath it all...it's just Rory Kinnear over and over. LOL.
So is this a man-hating movie? It depends on your perspective! Note in the above paragraph I focused on "misogyny", not "men". *Misogyny* is relentless, perverted, and hateful...not men. Women can be misogynists too. As can non-binary people and trans people. I think that Garland (a man!) set out to make an intense, absurdist horror film that shows how wild and disgusting contempt for women is...and the crazy bastard did it!
I really liked Men and I like it the more I think about it. I found it to be beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, and cathartic as hell. It is most definitely not for everyone and is designed to be divisive, but I fell on the side of "it was really great and really fun".
Grade: A-
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