Muscle is a fearless exercise in deconstructing… | Little White Lies

Mus­cle is a fear­less exer­cise in decon­struct­ing on-screen masculinity

05 Dec 2020

Greyscale image of a man with a stern expression, wearing a sleeveless top and multiple necklaces.
Greyscale image of a man with a stern expression, wearing a sleeveless top and multiple necklaces.
Ger­ard Johnson’s genre-defy­ing lat­est toss­es class, sex­u­al­i­ty and body image into a pun­gent stew.

Filmed in stark black-and-white and set against a spit-and-saw­dust body­build­ing gym in the North­east of Eng­land, Ger­ard Johnson’s Mus­cle fol­lows a dis­af­fect­ed, mid­dle-aged call cen­tre work­er named Simon (Cavan Clerkin). Feel­ing unmoored in his life and his mar­riage, Simon turns to the local gym in an attempt to shore up his phys­i­cal strength and his sense of self.

It’s here that he meets the charis­mat­ic and impos­ing Ter­ry (Craig Fair­brass, giv­ing a per­for­mance of real men­ace and depth), who offers to be Simon’s per­son­al train­er. But Ter­ry grows increas­ing­ly over­bear­ing and emo­tion­al­ly manip­u­la­tive with his impres­sion­able charge, with glints of racist vio­lence and prison stints in his past that hard­ly bode well.

Despite its premise, Mus­cle should not be mis­tak­en for a straight­for­ward macho crime flick, John­son says. These types of films are nor­mal­ly very male-cen­tric, and espe­cial­ly with some­one like Craig in the film, you’re expect­ing some­thing. But at its core, it’s a rela­tion­ship drama.”

For all the talk about tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty’, what’s espe­cial­ly tren­chant about the film is the sym­pa­thy it engen­ders in its por­tray­al of the con­fused and wound­ed Simon, who admires Terry’s machis­mo even as he grows to sus­pect that his friend is not who he says he is. Simon begins to phys­i­cal­ly alter, bulk­ing up and shav­ing his head, and an atti­tude change comes with it. You see it all the time in these gyms,” John­son explains, men change the way they walk; but behind all the steroids and mus­cles and tat­toos, there are a lot of very inse­cure peo­ple. A lot of the rea­son for why they do it is to build a shield of armour for themselves.”

The unfor­get­table cen­tre­piece of Mus­cle is a drink-and-drug-fuelled par­ty which Ter­ry throws at Simon’s house. It starts harm­less­ly enough, but soon descends into a night­mar­ish, blurred-at-the-edges orgy which Simon can’t ful­ly rec­ol­lect in the morn­ing. John­son actu­al­ly shot these explic­it scenes over the course of two days with the per­mis­sion of a real-life swingers club. It was a min­i­mal crew, and it was a real par­ty. They were used to us very quick­ly. It was a very, very intense film­ing expe­ri­ence,” the direc­tor recalls.

Mus­cle was cut in order to secure a low­er cer­tifi­cate in France, and that less explic­it ver­sion also appeared at the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val in 2019. The cur­rent VOD release, how­ev­er, is the prop­er director’s cut. It’s such a piv­otal moment in the film,” John­son says. Simon’s gone over to the oth­er side. It’s not that it needs to be gra­tu­itous, but you need to be out of your com­fort zone.”

As the mood grows dark­er, Terry’s more preda­to­ry ten­den­cies become clear, in more ways than one. It’s rare to see an abu­sive rela­tion­ship play out between two tough guys’ giv­en the way vic­tim­hood is usu­al­ly por­trayed on screen; white work­ing-class men are typ­i­cal­ly seen as per­pe­tra­tors rather than vic­tims of sex­u­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal abuse.

Visu­al­ly, the film adheres to a myopic, anx­ious per­spec­tive, putting the audi­ence on the same uncom­fort­able ground as its pro­tag­o­nist and see­ing his rip­pling fears grow and mutate into rage. Simon views the few women in his life with emas­cu­lat­ed fear, and they for­ev­er seem to be jeer­ing at him. Whether they actu­al­ly are jeer­ing or not is beyond the point – it’s Simon’s psy­che that’s direct­ing our gaze.

We’re see­ing it a lot nowa­days, in what’s going on in the cur­rent cli­mate,” John­son says. Men are feel­ing slight­ly lost, or unsure of where they fit any­more.” It makes per­fect sense that, as a result, men like Simon might look to rein­force or reassert their sense of mas­culin­i­ty in the gym. But it’s not all just ret­ro­grade, as John­son points out. These gyms are like com­mu­ni­ty hubs, and there are lots of wound­ed men who go there to talk about their prob­lems: their trou­bled rela­tion­ships, the jobs they hate. It’s almost like their tribe.”

That tribe becomes almost like an intox­i­cant for Simon, who is inex­tri­ca­bly drawn to the new lifestyle Ter­ry intro­duces to him even at the expense of his work, mar­riage, and well-being. A smart, dis­turb­ing for­ay into the unfash­ion­able world of the mas­cu­line ego, with real-world ques­tions about what frag­ments are left behind for work­ing-class men in 2020, Mus­cle might just be one of the most social­ly-rel­e­vant films of the year.

Mus­cle is released in cin­e­mas and video on demand 4 Decem­ber, on dig­i­tal 18 Jan­u­ary and Blu-ray and DVD on 1 Feb­ru­ary, 2021.

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