Movie Review : Men (2022)
My life changed for the better the day I learned not to always think of women in sexual terms. It might seem like a fucked up confession, but I assure do that it's something a larger number of men never ever learn and it makes them (and everyone around them) fucking miserable. Not to think of yourself and your desires to be the center of the universe is difficult, but it's also freeing. If you ever told me someone would turn this idea into a folk horror movie I would’ve called you insane, but here we are.
Alex Garland's Men exists and it's kind of great for what it is.
Men tells the story of Harper (Jessie Buckley), a young widow who rented a gigantic house in the English countryside in order to heal from her late husband (Paapa Essiedu) apparent suicide. While she wanders the forest and minding her own business one day, she stumbles upon a creepy-ass naked man (Rory Kinnear) with cuts all over his body. Wherever she turns for help with this situation, she inevitably stumbles upon men who look exactly like him and who have pretty fucked up ways of handling the situation.
Patriarchy: The Movie
This movie has been quite criticized for trying to make a feminist statement because it was written by a man and I understand the sentiment, but I don't think it was made to prove a point or earn bragging rights. I understood Men to be an exercise in empathy. To explore the "otherness" of our own desires and limitations from a woman's point of view. From the point of view of someone who is constantly physically threatened and sexually desired at the same time. These are fucked up shoes to fill, but it works.
The choice of Jessie Buckley for the lead part really helps getting the point across because she's aesthetically pleasant without being overly sexual. But it's what every other character sees anyway. Because it's what they WANT to see. While the naked man in the woods represents male desire in its naturalistic purity, in all its strength and ugliness, other characters represent different facets of this monolithic point of view that we tend to unfortunately share.
The housekeeper Geoffrey is some kind of superego, who is driven to do right by his guest, hoping that it will gain her favours. His behaviour is unthreatening, but his eyes are lustful and pleading. The policeman represents the desire for control. The vicar represents institutional repression and perpetual self-justification. The child represents the childlike need to always be satisfied, etc. I believe this is really more an effort in introspection and inner mapping than an outright feminist statement per se.
This is also a smart film and efficient horror
Of course, social commentary occupies a lot of space in Men. There's no going around it. But if you can work your way around it for a second, there's a lot to enjoy from a technical and narrative point of view. The atypical use of sound is one of the movie’s greatest assets. Men doesn't have a conventional soundtrack to speak of, but instead uses naturalistic sound in order to scramble our expectations and keep itself unpredictable.
There's one great scene in particular where Harper finds a tunnel and starts vocalizing through it in order to hear her own echo. The symbolic is there: there’s a light at the end. She found a boundless space she can fully occupy, which contrasts with the cluttered space she shared with her ex-husband. Then BOOM: a discordant sound and suddenly there’s someone at the end of it. A male figure running towards her. In a vacuum it's not scary at all, but given the emotional build-up it's fucking terrifying.
Alex Garland's use of composition was also greatly entertaining to me. Especially when it came to the naked man, who wandered in the background from frame to frame. Almost a part of the naturalistic decor. His presence was a great use of Freud’s unheimlich. The soothing, healing nature that surrounded Harper suddenly grow a dangerous element that became fixated on her. It was the familiar, calming presence coming undone and turning on the protagonist.
*
I've been a fan of Alex Garland for many years now, but I really enjoyed Men. Both stylistically, narratively and as an exercise in empathy. I'm not saying that it's a cure for misogyny or anything like this, but it's an attempt to deconstruct a genre's own patterns that's interesting from a reflexive point of view. I understand that women were greatly unimpressed by Men, but in an odd, roundabout way, I’m not sure you were the target audience for this? Anyway, I’ve enjoyed it. It’s good, disturbing horror.
