Men

One of my favourite viral videos of late is a super­cut of Jamie Lee Cur­tis on the Hal­loween Kills press trail, repeat­ed­ly stat­ing that it’s ​“a movie about trau­ma”.

No dis­re­spect to Cur­tis, as it must be exhaust­ing talk­ing about the same film and try­ing to think of new, inter­est­ing things to say about it, but the video also indi­cates how ​‘trau­ma’ has become the alle­gor­i­cal buzz­word of choice in hor­ror mar­ket­ing of late. While the genre has always had a con­nec­tion to men­tal health and har­row­ing life expe­ri­ences, now more than ever it feels like a dan­ger­ous crutch for film­mak­ers to fall back on in place of more robust and cre­ative storytelling.

Alex Garland’s work often deals with the gen­e­sis or fall­out of earth-shat­ter­ing events, from his bleak scripts for 28 Days Lat­er… and Sun­shine through to the murky pow­er dynam­ics of Ex Machi­na and the female pro­tag­o­nists of Anni­hi­la­tion, who opt for a sui­cide mis­sion as a result of var­i­ous dif­fi­cult per­son­al circumstances.

Men fol­lows this pat­tern, as Harp­er Mar­lowe (Jessie Buck­ley) embarks on a fortnight’s stay at a rur­al coun­try estate fol­low­ing the death of her hus­band James (Paa­pa Essiedu). She is greet­ed by the home’s own­er, Geof­frey (Rory Kin­n­ear) a bum­bling but affa­ble gen­tle­man, but as Harp­er begins to explore her sur­round­ings and process her grief around her husband’s death, it becomes evi­dent that some­thing is deeply amiss.

As made appar­ent in the film’s trail­er, the major­i­ty of the occu­pants of the local vil­lage are men (and all played by Rory Kin­n­ear) and they react to Harper’s pres­ence with vary­ing degrees of hos­til­i­ty. There is a sug­ges­tion that some­thing more mys­ti­cal is going on in the area, in the vein of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List or In the Earth (add a sprin­kle of The League of Gen­tle­men too) but the film attempts to mar­ry its folk hor­ror ele­ments with the sto­ry of Harper’s dif­fi­cult mar­riage, and these two nar­ra­tives don’t quite mesh in a coher­ent way.

Harp­er endures vary­ing degrees of harass­ment and gaslight­ing from the blokes about town, rang­ing from a creepy non-ver­bal naked man to a gob­shite school­boy and a smarmy priest who brazen­ly sug­gests that she was the cause of her husband’s death (a thought that has already plagued Harp­er). The thing is, in 2022, what good does it real­ly do to present a woman under­go­ing trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences if there is no real com­men­tary or mean­ing behind it? Garland’s film seems to be an attempt to high­light the very real misog­y­ny with­in the mod­ern world that has no insight on the sub­ject beyond Women Have Always Had It Quite Bad.

Addi­tion­al­ly, mak­ing a film about gen­dered vio­lence in which the white female pro­tag­o­nist has a Black hus­band (who is pre­sent­ed as men­tal­ly unsta­ble and vio­lent) with­out address­ing that the pow­er dynam­ic may be dif­fer­ent in inter­ra­cial rela­tion­ships feels like a mas­sive over­sight. The mat­ter was explored to great effect in Get Out – also, to a degree, a movie about Trau­ma – and while Gar­land might not be the best-placed film­mak­er to pass com­ment on this, ignor­ing it in a film so con­scious of how men and women see each oth­er shows a glar­ing lapse in judgment.

In the third act of Men, things real­ly fall to pieces for Harp­er and the gag­gle of Kin­n­ears make her life a mis­ery. The film leans heav­i­ly into body hor­ror, but the impact is less­ened by virtue of how long Gar­land keeps one key scene going.

Even for the ever-com­pelling Buck­ley, it’s a stretch for her to do any­thing too inter­est­ing with her under­de­vel­oped role. And while Kin­n­ear is clear­ly hav­ing the time of his life get­ting weird with his mul­ti­fac­eted part, the lit­er­al ​“Yes, All Men” of it all feels sore­ly lack­ing in mean­ing – more so a ges­ture towards more inter­est­ing ancestors.

He’s cer­tain­ly been mak­ing the most of his Antichrist Blu-ray, but Lars Von Trier’s pen­chant for the grotesque feels root­ed in deep­er mean­ing per­haps due to his can­did­ness about his own long-term depres­sion and psy­chosis. His work is divi­sive, but incred­i­bly per­son­al, and suc­cess­ful because of the con­nec­tions von Tri­er draws between his own demons and wider expe­ri­ences of grief and trau­ma. Here the roots don’t seem to take hold in fer­tile ground, and Men with­ers on the vine.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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