Men: A Nightmare

We got out of the house yesterday, trading a nap for a public dream. The public dream turned out to be a film called Men, directed by Alex Garland...starring Jessie Buckley as Harper and Rory Kinnear. Kinnear plays several different men each of them disturbing in their needy, chauvinstic portrayal of oddly unique yet stereoptypical menace as over generalized versions of the worst of the masculine gender engaged in our favorite pursuits; patronizing, threatening, mansplaining, stalking, hypocritical, blasphemous insecurity.

Thanks a lot Alex...

This public dream is a nightmare portrayal of ultra-feminism mixed with regret, torment, and inability to love. When we play the private movies in our mind called nightmares, we generally forget about them upon awakening. The imagery contained in Men which clobbers us while we're "awake" will be much harder to forget. We consented and paid money for this where as nightmares are free adn non-consensual.

It's a penis dangling, vagina popping, scabpicking, palm splitting, ankle fracturing, vision of unhappiness so loaded with symbolism and metaphor that there must be a message in it somewhere. It's reminscent of another nightmarish confabulation of film from a few years back entitled Mother.

Lynn and I constituted exactly one half of the audience as only four people were  in the theater to watch the goings on of Men when not turning away from the screen in horror, wonder or disgust. The low volume of much of the dialogue left great gaps in the exposition which I suppose we fill in with our own translations of what the hell is going on and where this anxiety laden contraption is headed.

At times, the film is delicately and beautifully shot which adds to the clarity and pain of whatever nightmare whomever is having during the action of the film. Judging from its climax when the title finally comes on the screen, the viewer is left with the idea that it's men in general who are the cause of all the delirious torment, anguish, anger and retribution engendered by the "protagonist" Harper, formidably portrayed by Jessie Buckley, who may or may not be guilty of causing the death of her confounded husband James who may or not be the victim or the victimizer. His behavior is on the fence.

It's kinda nice to know that movies like this are still being produced. This movie has no desire to capture a large audience. It's messsage, if there is one is too polarizing and abstract to summarize and takes way too much effort to untangle which means it's going to stay in the mind of the viewer probably longer than most viewers will be comfortable with and begin discussions that can go in so many directions that they may not even be worth beginning. We're not taling Marvel when we took about Men

Is it all taking place in Harper's mind? If so that leaves many holes in the aftermath? Has it all actually happened? If so the film requires a profoud suspension of perplexed disbelief.

Should you go see it?

If you like miscarriages, penis flopping, vagina popping, scab scraping, yellow matter custard dripping from a dead deer's eye,  palm splitting imagery, then this one is probably the best movie ever made. Go see it immediately.