OK, I was going to open this review with some general thoughts on my personal history with the works of writer/director Alex Garland, going back to his novel The Beach, but then I got to the end of Men and I really wanted to discuss the ending. However, I try to avoid spoilers in these reviews, even for movies older than I am. These reviews to, typically, follow a pattern: short anecdote over two opening paragraphs, the second a short one. Then a picture. Then two paragraphs analyzing the movie, and then the grade. This time around, I am adding some SPOILER SPACE stuff after the grade. There will be another photo there, so unless you have either A) seen the movie and want to see what I think or B) don’t care and want to see what I think of the ending.
So, yeah, stop after the grade to avoid spoilers.
Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley) needs some time to herself. Her husband (Paapa Essiedu) just died, possibly a suicide, and she watched him drop off their building. The marriage had been a bit on the rocks anyway, and she needs some time to herself to get her head together and her life in order. As such, she rents a house in the English countryside from the eccentric Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), a man who makes a few passive aggressive jokes but it may not matter much. The house is peaceful and Harper really needs this.
Except, the house and the land around her may not be so inclined to give Harper that peace. She keeps coming across these men, all of whom have Kinnear’s face, and none of them seem particularly helpful. There’s the cop who doesn’t believe her, the vicar that seems inclined to blame Harper for her husband’s death, a creepy-looking kid tosses off profanity if she won’t play with him, and there’s a silent naked man who keeps showing up. What is up with these guys? And what do they want with Harper?
This is an A24 movie, and one written and directed by Alex Garland, so yes, it is weird. It’s the kind of weird that will turn a lot of people off, and the 40% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes backs me up there, as did one fellow walking out of the theater at the same time I did, asking what the heck he just watched and rating the movie a “two out of ten”. Except, I tend to enjoy a lot of those sorts of movies, the ones that provoke thought and aren’t meant for more casual moviegoers. I walk out of those with my mind humming. Someone just looking for a bit of escapist fun are probably not going to go for something like that. That applies to something like mother! and it certainly counts for Men. Let that be your warning.
However, I did dig this. Buckley makes a good protagonist, someone who needs some time to herself to work through her own issues. Kinnear, meanwhile, is great at multiple characters, all of whom seem to demonstrate a different toxic male behavior, but never in an overly flashy way. He’s not trying to outshine Buckley, and indeed he doesn’t, but he is still creating different characters at the same time. What he is, if he is only one thing, is not quite explained, and Harper never stops to wonder why so many men in this area have variations of the same face, especially the kid with Kinnear’s head (easily the creepiest of the bunch). Instead, it’s a movie about how men can ruin a woman’s life, and how the woman may eventually find a way to fight back. This one isn’t for everybody, and it isn’t on the same level as Garland’s Annihilation, but I did dig the hell out of it all the same.
Grade: B+
SPOILER SPACE FROM HERE ON. KEEP GOING IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT SUCH THINGS.
OK, so, that ending…what the hell was that?
I got back from this movie a bit late last night–it was a 7PM showing before the weekend or stay up until 10PM some other night if I wanted to see this before it hit streaming or something–just thinking about the ending and what it meant, and that’s the sort of thing I tend to dig. The film never really explains what the Men are, even when Buckley asks the vicar directly. The film isn’t even certain how many of them are. There’s some interesting scenes showing different versions of Kinnear having a conversation with himself, but then the climax suggests there’s just one of him. That’s fine. His nature is odd, and Garland puts plenty of shots of nature, including a deer’s corpse, to suggest whatever Kinnear’s Men are, they may be more connected to something much older. I did some looking around when I got home, and Garland said there’s a connection to the old legend of the Green Man, a European folk belief of sorts, and there are plenty of shots of a Green Man carved into a baptismal font, an apparently common sight in old European churches.
However, the movie makes it clear that Harper was having problems with men well before she got to the village. Her dead husband wasn’t reacting well to her desire to get a divorce, and there’s enough that happened there to suggest that Harper does feel a bit of guilt over his death. True, she did nothing worse than maybe some rash words and the decisions he made that led to his death are entirely his fault, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t asking herself “What if?” afterwards. She may have wanted a divorce, and she may have been angry, but she didn’t want her husband James dead.
So, sure, my take on the Men is that they are essentially the physical manifestations of Harper’s guilt. Yes, there’s some Green Man iconography out there, but if you don’t know what the Green Man is, it doesn’t mean anything. At the end, when the Men start giving birth to each other, the last one is James, having the same injuries he had when he died, and saying all he wanted is Harper to love him. Harper has that ax. Did she use it? She sure looks peaceful when her (pregnant) friend Riley finally shows up the next morning. Well, I don’t know if she used it, but I think the point is whether she used it or not, the Men won’t be bothering her. Whatever guilt she felt, it’s gone. She can find some measure of peace now as a result whether she chopped James up or not.
Now, for the record, I don’t know if that’s Garland’s take. That’s mine. One thing they teach you in grad school for literature is that the author’s intent doesn’t matter. Instead, it’s what the individual reader/audience member gets out of it. So, Harper dealt with toxic male behavior, whether its passive aggressive commentary, being a little too familiar with women, ignoring their concerns, or blaming women for male failings. She didn’t deal with it once and for all–those are societal issues and she is but one woman–but at least she knows how to deal with it a bit better than she did before.
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