He plays the men in Men - all of them, with the exception of Harper’s late husband, played by Paapa Essiedu. We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the work of Rory Kinnear. It, too, is grotesque in its creation of a surreal world hostile to women. If Men does have a precedent, it might be Mother!, Darren Aronofsky’s gleefully over-the-top, gradually building domestic nightmare that embraces allegory, batters audience expectations, and makes people angry - it was lustily booed when it premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival. He’s a natural filmmaker, and it’s distressing to think, as he recently told the New York Times, that the process so dismays him that he’s thinking of walking away. He’s a dark visual sensualist who loves the mystery inherent to the most potent images. But he’s absolutely not just a writer who happens to make movies. Garland started as a screenwriter, often working on Danny Boyle films. What about men? Are they all that bad? Are they all the same, or is that just Harper’s perspective? But it would be a mistake to get too mired in such matters at the expense of the movie’s aesthetics - the popping colors, a Garland signature, the razor’s edge editing, the slithering pace. Men wants to be interpreted and argued over, starting with its title. Yes, Men is concerned with birth, the messiness of it, and the fact that men don’t have to worry about the physical commitment of it - at least, not usually. The grotesquery starts at a moderate level, a strange body part here and there, before hitting in a big, slimy way that might make you think of Russian nesting dolls in a whole new way. Men turns into a viscous study in body horror, a subject in the cinematic air these days as the king of the subgenre, David Cronenberg, returns to the screen in gooey style with Crimes of the Future. Garland puts Buckley, an Oscar nominee for 2021’s The Lost Daughter, through the wringer, and the actress responds with a high-wire performance that makes us wonder if she’s going crazy or just having a really bad couple of days. The music gets eerier and louder, and the camera angles accentuate the threats, which come from everywhere. The jump-scares start adding up, along with the home invasions. But there’s no mistaking once you get there. If you blink, you might miss Men's transition from psychological provocation to all-out horror. It’s enough to make a young woman take up arms, which is precisely what Harper does. And there's, of course, the naked guy, who, as the film progresses, seems to be sprouting leaves and branches from his head and body. There’s her sniveling host, generously described by Harper as “very, very country.” There’s the pious, self-righteous vicar, who suggests Harper is to blame for her husband’s suicide and has brought on these new horrors, and there's the strange young man in a clown mask who wants to play hide-and-seek. They come in all shapes, sizes, and demeanors, these men. But also a harbinger of more men to come. He would appear to be the original man of Men, the one lingering in the garden, at least until he tries to break into the house. Here he sends Harper on a little nature hike, which goes fine until she encounters a large, bald, naked man, his body and head covered in cuts. His second feature, Annihilation, unfolded in a color-blasted Eden inhabited by strange creatures, their DNA mutated beyond recognition. Garland has a thing for the horrific bucolic. At which point the madness can commence - gradually, and then in a barrage of images that range from terrifying to merely interesting to really gross. As we see in flashbacks, he was the emotionally manipulative and physically abusive type, needy and self-centered and eager to proclaim to his wife his plans to end it all - we see him falling to his death in slow motion to the strains of Elton John’s “Love Song." Escaping London, Harper pulls up to what seems like an idyllic Airbnb, chats with the eccentric host, and settles in. Forbidden fruit.” We are in the land of Big Symbols, where we must decide what to take literally, with an occasional hint, what carries extra freight, and what might be a flat-out hallucination.Īll Harper wants is a country getaway to help her get over her husband’s suicide. In case you didn’t get the biblical allusion, there’s a man standing by to provide gloss: “Mustn’t do that. Near the beginning of Men, Alex Garland’s new feminist freakout about guilt and madness at an English country estate, the recently widowed Harper (Jessie Buckley) picks an apple from a tree and takes a big bite.
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