Men (2022) — Read Along
The magnificent forbidden fruit of Alex Garland
2nd July 2022
Following the film’s sparse opening credits, Alex Garland’s latest creation immediately reminded me of the saturated colour hues and strange beginning to the Lynne Ramsay directed “Morvern Callar” from 2002, a tinge of the Paul Thomas Anderson directed “Magnolia” in 1999 and whilst I’m always seeking tenuous links to this film in particular, by this film’s denouement I couldn’t help but also draw comparisons with yet another psychological horror, 2011’s astounding “Kill List” directed by Ben Wheatley.
“Men” is FUBAR. Glorious FUBAR.
Chilling. Unsettling. Uneasy. Twisted. Creepy. Horrifying.
And yet another incredible achievement from Alex Garland.
Long time writer for, and collaborator with, Danny Boyle, this is the third directorial effort from Garland and as with his magnificent predecessors “Ex Machina” in 2014 and “Annihilation” in 2018, director Garland also penned the screenplay here too. I immediately fell in love with Ex Machina and its disturbing theme of sentient AI usurping human will and Annihilation shocked and creeped me out. Garland’s latest shocked and horrified me on a scale I haven’t felt since Kill List a decade ago, and I hope it finds a huge audience.
The brief premise is simple: “Harper” (Jessie Buckley) is a young lady coming to terms with the death of her husband “James” (Paapa Essiedu) and in doing so, retreats to an opulent and luxurious manor house deep in the English countryside. Owned and rented out by “Geoffrey” (Rory Kinnear), a strange, cliched riddled and seemingly wealthy country gentleman, the strangeness has only just begun. The idyll of an English countryside retreat is broken and wherever Harper turns, it’s clear she is incredibly unwelcome and slowly retreats further into her own recurring nightmares.
The trio of central characters are aided by just four other portrayals but rather than note character names, and in an effort to keep spoilers to an absolute minimum, the supporting characters consist of a mysterious man, a naked man, a Policeman, a masked schoolboy, a Vicar and a smattering of local men drinking in the pub. If your mathematics skills are good, you’ll see we have a problem here! Aside from these characters are also two lone female roles (Harper’s friend ostensibly seen on video telephone calls and a Policewoman) and this chasm in the division of the gender roles is as deliberate as my not wanting to elucidate any further on the supporting characters or the fact the mathematics clearly don’t add up.
Here’s your star of a twisted, horrific show:
“Harper” (Jessie Buckley) Two years ago Jessie Buckley stole the show as well as my cinematic heart in the typically absurdist and surreal Charlie Kaufman directed “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” and she does so again here. The calm outward exterior of a young lady escaping to the country before plucking a fruit from the forbidden tree is jarringly and brilliantly replaced with primordial raged filled anger as well as a growing terror that she isn’t so much being stalked or watched on her luxurious retreat, but surrounded and haunted from all sides. Ostensibly a three hander with husband James seen in narrative filling flashback, it’s to Rory Kinnear we turn for a stereotypically awkward portrayal of an insular country squire and a man living in a time that’s long been forgotten. Kinnear’s character is emblematic of the heavily laden male cast as every conversation or interaction almost immediately turns and twists against our horror heroine. Declining a game of “Hide and Seek” from a schoolboy, Harper is called a “bitch” before fleeing from an intimidating Vicar only to receive the cold, dead eyed stares from the locals in the pub. Who was the mysterious stranger in the train tunnel? Why is the Policeman standing in her garden late at night?
And why is a naked man stalking and following her every move?
By the film’s denouement I was as wracked with nervous anxiety and not knowing where this unsettling psychological horror was going as I always am when watching Kill List. The ultimate ending was an obvious twist, but the 20 minutes leading up to the calm after the storm could have gone ridiculously off the rails and due to the directorial skills of Garland, it doesn’t. Spoilers won’t allow for the obvious nod to a collection of gross horror films in this film’s final Act, but kudos must also be paid to Rob Hardy for his cinematography and especially to Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury for their eerie, haunting musical score that reminded me so much of the ominous tones used throughout Stanley Kubrick’s final film, “Eyes Wide Shut”.
So with the name-checked films of yesteryear, Men must have impressed me, and it did. The juxtaposition between the light and the dark dissipates after twenty minutes and deliberately so, but first it allows for the appreciation of the joyous nature of nature, the bluest of bluebells, a field of dandelions, wooded walks, miles of English countryside and the fruits from forbidden trees. This brilliantly realised light from cinematographer Rob Hardy is then magnificently juxtaposed with long dark nights of the soul written by director Alex Garland, and an ever building uneasy tension that isn’t relied upon for jump scares or creaking floorboards but long, lingering camera shots on our heroine unable to escape the ghosts of her past.
Far more intelligent souls than I will point to the allegory of the eating of an apple from the tree and from what scant headline reviews I’ve seen of this film so far, the words “Toxic Masculinity” scream from nearly every one of them. There is certainly a vast amount of masculinity on show and it’s toxic and deeply, deeply horrible, but lame real life and insulting labels such as these don’t help. “They” are out to get us all, regardless of our gender or identity labels.
This is Alex Garland’s most human film to date, of death, rebirth, guilt, suspicion, trauma, shell shock and self care away from a concrete imposed reality shot through the twisted lens of a personal psychological horror that will live with me for a long time to come.
Highly recommended.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.