Rated: MA15+
Written and Directed by: Alex Garland
Starring: Jesse Buckly, Rory Kinnear and Paapa Essiedu.
‘What do you want from me?!’
I had an angry response to, Ex Machina (2014) (a strong response a sign of an emotive movie, I guess).
Conversely, I really enjoyed the head-bend of, Annihilation (2018).
So I was curious to see what writer and director, Alex Garland was going to evoke with, Men.
The film follows lead character, Harper (Jesse Buckly) – it’s raining outside.
She has blood smudged under her nose.
She runs.
She stays in an idyllic country house to heal.
Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) shows her around, a classic affable Englishman, ‘Won’t be a jiffy,’ he says.
Then comments, ‘The M4, a dreary bore.’
Then adds, ‘Watch what you flush. It’s a septic tank and all…’
A jarring statement and a hint of what’s to come.
Geoff, it turns out, is one of the many men-clones, that Harper must endure during her time away from life.
Contrasting the clones is this heightened sense of beauty, the landscape like a moving Monet painting.
Beautiful, then flawed by a naked man, a running man, that stalks her.
The telling of, Men, feels off-centre but clever and green, like an expression of the primal with Harper taking an apple from a tree and taking a bite like Eve in the, Garden of Eden.
The film weaves around this theme of Adam and Eve, subtle, then visceral.
The present bleeds into Harper’s past, her screaming voice becoming one with the soundtrack.
What do you want from me?!
This constant demand becomes an extreme depiction of men’s misunderstanding of what a woman needs.
That a woman has her own life too.
Rather than a confronting horror, I found the thought behind the film refreshing.