As far as thesis statements go, “The world is awful to women at every step” is a fairly direct one. The trick is how to tell that story without being drowned out in a chorus of “not all men” and “well, actually” while also not belaboring the point of losing an audience’s interest with a didactic drum solo.
Alex Garland’s solution to this trick in his latest film Men is to focus on a small handful of terrific actors, disrupt the narrative with a nightmarish otherworldliness, and baffle the audience with dream logic to the point where what happens on the screen is far less important than how it makes the watcher feel. Defining success is something that is in the eye of the beholder in this case. Is it a well-made film? Yes. Does it hold interest? Certainly. Is it an easy watch? Oh my, no. Did it make its point? Again, that’s up to the viewer but it’s not for lack of effort on the film’s part.
Spoilers Follow!
The narrative itself is remarkably straightforward. A young woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley) is recovering from the sudden and traumatic death of her estranged husband. She books a stay in a quiet country house, far from the flat in London where her husband died. As we learn from viewing Harper’s Facetime conversations with her sister Riley (Gayle Rankin), this trip is the only thing Harper wanted for herself and almost immediately, the men of the small village (all played by Rory Kinnear) conspire to take this one small joy away from her.
The deprivations take many forms. Men is a horror film after all and it comes complete with supernatural, feral creatures lurking in the background of shots just out of Harper’s sight. A naked man living in the woods stalks Harper, preventing her from walking alone in a town that is so safe she’s told not to bother locking her doors. But the more mundane threats present a constant reminder of the low-level deprivations delivered to women. From the police who refuse to take her concerns seriously to the bar patrons who stare hungrily at Harper’s body as soon as she enters to the owner of the rental who covers his passive aggressive comments about her marital status with a bumbling country self-deprecation that is difficult to call out as insulting.
The film tips rather suddenly from mundane horror into the supernatural and leans fully into the folk horror genre as Harper realizes there is no safety for her on this trip. The change is a bit jarring and the final acts of the film are hard to parse in any normal narrative sense. As with any horror movie, a certain amount of artistic license must be given to accept that the movie is happening to begin with. If every woman ran screaming from danger at the first naked monster sighting, there’d be no genre. However, Men dips into territory already covered by Midsommar, with the main character losing agency and making poor, almost concussed decisions in the film’s climactic moments. Is this meant to convey the feeling of women walking through their normal lives in the real world, so beset by indignities and threats that the only way through is to see what happens and only fight when backed into a corner? Perhaps. That’s how I took it. It does make for a discomforting and at times dissatisfying viewing experience.
If the nature of the storytelling wasn’t enough to provoke feelings of revulsion, Men makes sure audiences won’t feel safe in the viewing by resorting to that 8th-grade health class trick of showing the miracle of birth, trying to scare those entering puberty from ever considering sex again. I say this as something of a trigger warning, something of a spoiler, and certainly as a remark on something left out of the advertising, but there are several points of body horror including dramatic special effects shots of things giving birth to things that are anatomically unlikely. Oh and also some full frontal male nudity but by the time the birth scenes happen, the nudity seems almost quaint.
Beyond the so-good-they’re-upsetting effects, the strength of Men lies with the cast. Aside from the points when the character of Harper is nerfed by the narrative, Buckley plays her with a restrained inner conflict that sometimes boils over to exasperated rage and frustration. We only see the death of her estranged husband in bits and fragments but Harper is clearly over being blamed for the violence and hatred of men, sick of the threats to her body and her dignity. It’s a hard role to play without provoking cries of “we get it!” or “slay kween” from opposite sides of the peanut gallery. Just how much weight and blame for her husband’s death is being carried by Harper is ambiguous and that is a credit to Buckley’s performance. No one should have to go through what an everywoman like Harper does. She remarks to a vicar that since she lives in London, being called a bitch by teenagers is nothing new and says it with a resignation that implies all the supernatural shit about to happen is just part of life. And then the vicar tries to assault her, so y’know, she’s not wrong.
The other side to Buckley’s coin is the men of the movie, almost all played by Rory Kinnear. Kinnear does a tremendous job with the multiple roles, so good that unless you were told they’re all the same actor, some might be harder to tell than others. Most of the men are one-dimensional lechers but they’re all from a different dimension, making it an interesting acting exercise to witness. The characters at the far ends of the Kinnear’s spectrum, the well-meaning yet misogynistic rental owner and the malevolent naked man come to ravage Harper just for existing, provide the parameters of the performance, and there’s plenty of room to play within that wide range.
Deciding whether or not to recommend Men leaves a lot of questions where the answer comes with more questions. Does it work as a horror film? The people in the theater with me (most of whom came alone, which was perhaps an omen) gasped a few times, but while there were moments of genuine tension, it wasn’t exactly scary. Does it make its point? Yes with a question mark? Is it a well-made film? Absolutely. The symbolism, the cinematography, the sound design, the acting, all top-notch. Is it worth recommending? I’ve thought about it since the credits rolled and I’m no closer to answering that one. Which, if the point is to think about being a little less awful to the women of the world, ill-defined unease might be the correct thing to walk away from the film with.
Grade: C+/B-
Plusses: Acting, sound design, mood, ambient creepiness
Negatives: Helpless character syndrome, graphic unnatural childbirth, pervy vicars, general reaction of “what?” afterwards
