In the world of writer/director Alex Garland, people are vanishing. In Danny Boyle’s films with him, all humans always seem to become more and more lonely, whether it is through choice or chance. This includes The Beach where they land on an empty island, 28 Days Later in which London streets are deserted and Sunshine where the crew of a drifting ship in space can be counted using fingers; his people inhabit specific locations as well as desolate spots in this world where they have to fight themselves and the implications of being human.
In this alteration that takes characters into secret isolation to confront monstrous truths, however, Garland has also directed two films. Ex Machina was Garland’s critically acclaimed debut film (one of the first great A24 movies) which centers on a few ‘people’ in a tech billionaire’s mansion while his perhaps better Annihilation follows a similar bunch that reduces its number upon entering an awful metaphysical region. Men continues humanity’s recession in Garland’s latest film with A24.
Garland has now made his most metaphorical use of isolated space yet: he has created a woman’s mind populated by multiple versions of the same actor. There are a couple other characters but almost never any physical proximity; there’s even one who resides on a cell phone screen digitally and another one is just her dead lover appearing from time to time through flashbacks only. No sir, Men is about Harper Marlowe and all the men around her are nothing else but various forms (or dangers) of masculinity at least according to Harper.
This trip for Harper back home after her husband James committed suicide (not that it often turns out like this in cinema). While she knows rationally that she did not cause his death there is still some sense of guilt; right before James killed himself he’d said “If you divorce me I will kill myself” after Harper had just told him so moments earlier. It feels during Men that it is all building up to and including the suicide which the film then flashes back to throughout the ‘real’ events of Harper’s vacation.
Geoffrey introduces her to a wide, 500-year-old home in a rural area, where she stays. In one of many subtle moments of sexism (or at least gendered discomfort), he warns her as mine host not to “flush anything except toilet paper down here.” She wanders around the woods until she comes upon an immense tunnel covered in darkness; this is where she stops playing music for a little while and starts singing with herself in order to give meaning about what men is really about. To make matters even more clear, there is a shadowy figure at the far end who looks strikingly like Harper when glimpsing through the dark. Moreover, every man that meets Harper seems quite similar ultimately becoming menacing too.
Horror is famously synecdochical and metaphoric; no other genre can do symbols like it. For instance, this is one of the features of the so-called ‘elevated horror’ era of films (most notably, A24’s horror movies), where cinema uses its bloodiness to say something sociocultural or individual about us. These days, scary movies with racial commentary in them, or even horror films attacking political ideology or economic inequality, are popping up so left right and center that Garland isn’t the only director relying on metaphor for plot. However, ‘Men’ remains to be among the most heavy-handed film by far.
A lot post-Men’s articles keep asking whether the genre has gone too far with metaphor and taken out “sub” from subtext altogether, being as bad at hints as pimples are. Inside Hook’s “On ‘Men’ and Heavy-Handedness of Highbrow Horror” and The Guardian’s “Scarily Obvious: Why the Horror Genre Needs to Drop Clumsy Metaphors” exemplify several such articles that argue towards a growing loss of subtlety within Men’s metaphors which point to an emerging trend.
This is not just a thinly veiled symbolism in Men but rather a text engaging with many others through purposeful reference to those texts in order to interrogate how women have been blamed since humans began telling stories. Sure it is clear as day that Harper eats an apple from a tree while Geoffrey jokes saying it is forbidden fruit; it is also easy to see that this allusion specifically refers back to Adam’s temptation in Eden Garden despite its explicitness. Men overstates that many Judeo-Christian beliefs (if not most conservative ones) derive from Eve’s one bad choice; woman then becomes responsible for any loss of innocence or humankind falling away from Eden which was supposed to be ideal.
Sam Daniel as well makes a reference to his own poem Ulysses and the Siren, which in turn makes a reference to old Greek and Roman stories about Ulysses (or Odysseus). Here, the poet refers to the women whom the heroes meet on their journey as sirens; these women are so beautiful that they make men fall for them and sing so well. The lesson of this is clear in Homer’s myth: if a man is attracted to a woman it is her fault; her beauty will corrupt him because she is born evil and seductive.
There is no doubt that this poem by Daniels concludes with the famous line spoke by the siren, which in turn was spoken by a man in Men: “For beauty hath created been to undo, or be undone.” These authors imply that female beauty has led to the downfall of mankind. In another poem, entitled “Love is a sickness full of woes, all remedies refusing,” Daniels uses metaphors that are obvious but nonetheless highly beneficial. Harper’s husband’s suicide prompts an accusing priest at a church to ask her why she “drove him to it;” not playing with a boy leads him to call her an expletive; and when her husband tells her his suicide will be her fault. That Harper is haunted shouldn’t be surprising after all this narrative history of women being blamed for men’s own actions and let-downs.
One could argue that Garland has always been slowly moving towards horror since his childhood. Garland demonstrates this almost in real-time through his script for Sunshine, which starts off as a solid sci-fi drama before plunging into full blown horror out of nowhere (and mostly pointlessly according to some). Yet it would be wrong to consider 28 Days Later as one of the best horror movies made during 2000’s because its script reads like a melancholic drama with suspenseful elements more than anything else; it is Danny Boyle who turns it into an actual horror movie with his excellent direction. Ex Machina features some disturbing imagery while Annihilation uncovers horrifying body horror within its sci-fi premise.
This is arguably Garland’s first true horror film and closer in spirit to atmospheric old-fashioned period horrors about women such as Don’t Look Now or Let’s Scare Jessica To Death than what many might refer to as ‘horror’. Well, not until Men reaches its final half hour, when everything goes haywire. The film builds up its atmosphere masterfully until it becomes an absolutely vile body horror gross out which would no doubt put a smile on David Cronenberg’s face. The images are so sickening, the effects so completely gross, and the scene so impossibly long that it almost risks becoming an oddity to gawk at rather than a frightening series of scares.
But still, this is an incredible and unforgettable climax that amounts to a visual enactment of all that was symbolized before it. The sequence (and indeed the movie) would be nothing without the two leads, Jessie Buckley (as Harper), Rory Kinnear (as basically everyone else). Kinnear does something similar to what Tom Noonan did so wonderfully in Anomalisa by playing nearly everyone in the film; however, he is able to differentiate each character from another. In Men though, unlike it being stop motion animation as such was for that one, he surpasses himself with regard to playing different men from his range. Absolutely brilliant here after recently shining in Our Flag Means Death, the actor proves why he needs more lead roles.
Buckley’s performance is also flawless because she has to be — she appears in every single scene and this film explores her mind. This is once again evident with her involvement in Sarah Polley’s forthcoming Women Talking where she shows why she deserves roles in some most intriguing and daring films and TV shows of recent years (I’m Thinking of Ending Things; The Lost Daughter; Fargo; Chernobyl).
Garland is another of Rob Hardy’s cinematography projects and it is evident that the two use the same visual language. The visuals are organic, very textual, earthy and deeply immersed in a eerie countryside setting, and its inclusion of ghastly special effects in its last part was commendable. Though his work throughout significantly helps to enforce the (often overstated) themes of Garland, particularly the wonderful tunnel scene with light that Hardy creates using green and red colors, he has done an outstanding job.
Many metaphors used by men are quite straightforward since this movie is not what one may call subtly told at times; however, in relation to the way it uses them for telling a story about a lady’s irrational guilt or even her fear of gender itself (which she has started to find terrifying), it has been artfully executed.
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