Men (Alex Garland, 2022) (Patreon)

Having only read about Men and seen the trailer, I popped off on Twitter, as one does. I remarked that the film looked like the version of von Trier's Antichrist that this era deserves. Now that I have actually engaged with Men, I can see that I was only half right. While both films are about women and trauma, and the way that misogyny militates against the development of women's subjectivity, Antichrist moved in a very different direction. In that film, the lead character, "her" (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is completely broken down by sexual guilt and her husband's (Willem Dafoe) paternalistic care. She becomes a vengeful, deadly force, threatening to tear apart the social structures that want to destroy her. (It helps that von Trier placed Her's plight within the broader context of Western civilization's denigration of women. A shout-out to Antichrist's "misogyny consultant" seems in order here.)

But Men is ultimately wedded to the standard horror film conventions that most likely got Alex Garland his funding from A24. For Harper (Jessie Buckley), the trauma of being in an abusive relationship is there to provide flashbacks that suggest that she has been a victim long before heading out the creepy British countryside of Wickermania. There is an obtuse simplicity to Garland's overall scheme here. Harper leaves the city for some alone time, and discovers that misogyny and the prospect of rape and femicide follow her wherever she may roam. In a film governed by infantile symbolism -- hear the apple go crrrunch! -- she is more of a punching bag than a person.

So things are already dicey once Men kicks into high gear with its Big Conceit. Through the magic of CGI, every single man and boy Harper encounters in this backwater shares the same face (Rory Kinnear). And while they all represent slightly distinct hues of aggressive sexism -- from landlord Geoffrey's castrato chivalry to the little boy's sexual leer to the policeman's overt gaslighting, up to and including the vicar's attempted rape -- Men makes it painfully obvious that they are all of a piece. With its generic title, and the use of a single actor in multiple roles, Men leaves nothing to chance, or to interpretation.

The result is indeed a film for our cultural moment, when "art" is supposed to be baldly declarative, too afraid of being misunderstood to dabble in the dark arts of metaphor or allegory. (It isn't that hard to dazzle an under-educated populace, or to convince them that aesthetic value is some sort of elitist scam.) But even when compared with a film as skull-thumpingly obvious as Winding Refn's The Neon Demon, Men continually astonishes in its ability to yoke outré imagery to an outcome which is pretty much ordained from the very first frame. Of course all the Rory Kinnears are just permutations of Harper's dead abusive lover (Paapa Essiedu). Of course Garland needs to rip off Cronenberg but can only do so with a formal trope as gift-shop basic as Russian nesting dolls.

I will say this, though. The first third of Men contains sounds and images far more striking than anything a plodding literalist like Winding Refn could conjure. (How strange that he hasn't gone to work for Marvel yet!) As with his previous film Annihilation, Garland intimates that he's a landscape artist stuck in a cinematic genre ghetto, which I guess is part of the whole Elevated Horror hustle. As Harper explores the woods by herself, Men permits us to experience nature as a primeval force. Once Harper reaches a disused railway tunnel, it becomes apparent that Garland is riffing on Tarkovsky. But it's okay because it works. In fact, one particular shot is an almost direct reiteration of Alexandre Larose's brouillard films. The camerawork and sound design suggest that Garland's interest in cinematic green space is quite sincere.

But it's a bait and switch. Men only offers Harper the promise of Eden in order to snatch it away, because a woman without a male chaperone is an offense against the natural order. Or something. Anyway, please read Esther Rosenfield's review, which summarizes my frustration far better than I have.