Spoiler Warning: A24’s Men
Men is Alex Garland’s follow-up to Annihilation and Ex-Machina. While Garland dabbled with horror in his first two films, Men is his first true horror picture. Ex-Machina was Garland’s most accessible film, although the ending left audiences speculating on its true meaning. Annihilation was a surreal version of Tarkovsky’s Stalker. While following a traditional narrative, for the most part, its ending was otherworldly and abstract, leaving much to the viewer’s interpretation. Garland goes further down the rabbit hole with Men and crafts a narrative around Harper (Jessie Buckley), a widow who goes to the English countryside after the death of her husband, where she finds a village of men with the same face.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Harper’s struggle is apparent as she grapples with her role in the death of her husband, but what happens to her in the village is entirely left to our imagination. Garland gives no answers apart from the film’s backstory, which in itself has some gray areas. Men criticizes the historical and mythological roots of sexism and toxic masculinity in the world. Sexism and toxic masculinity might be the very base of the film’s themes, but much is still left open-ended.
The ending to Men leaves the audience bewildered and in a state of shock, witnessing gruesome images that will stay ingrained in their minds and leave them debating what it all meant for years to come.
What is Harper Running From?
A24
Harper is introduced in the opening shot of Men, where she screams in horror as she watches her husband, James (Paapa Essiedu), fall from the roof of their apartment building to his death. After this tragic event, Harper drives off to the countryside to get away, renting a quaint home from an overly familiar man named Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear). Throughout the film, Garland splices together the pieces of Harper’s final interaction with James. Harper and James had been married for over a year when Harper decided to break up with him, citing his emotional abuse as a primary reason. Only proving her point, James states that if he can’t have her love, he’ll kill himself to torment her forever.
The conflict over their breakup worsens when James hits Harper, forcing her to kick him out of their apartment. The next time James is seen is when he falls from the roof. The expression on James’ face says that he is both shocked by and regrets his decision. James might have fallen from the roof by accident or jumped purposefully, then realized the terrible choice he made as he fell. Harper had hoped by going on a trip to the countryside, and she could enable herself to move past the traumatic event. However, the mysterious English town had different plans in mind for her.
A Rory Kinnear Army
via A24
Rory Kinnear gives the cinematic performance of his career in Men, playing eight different characters in the town that Harper visits. Kinnear plays Geoffrey, a Vicar, a Naked Man, a boy named Samuel, a Bartender, Two Patrons, and a Police Officer. Upon arriving at a nearby church, Harper meets a boy called Samuel, who asks her to play with him. Distressed by her grief and feeling of responsibility for James’ death, Harper refuses Samuel, but in response, he calls her a “b***h.” Samuel feels entitled to Harper’s time and believes the only possible reason she wouldn’t want to spend time with him is that she’s a bad person.
This moment that Harper has with Samuel at the church alludes to one of the film’s key criticisms of society. That it’s a character flaw on a woman’s part for not reciprocating a man’s attention. Upon meeting the Vicar, he appears sympathetic to Harper initially, but after Harper professes her tragedy to him, he states that men having a go at their wives is a natural thing, and if Harper allowed James to apologize, then he’d still be alive. The Vicar blames Harper for James’ death and struggles to hold back his attraction for her, which he later acts on.
In a way, this scene with the Vicar connects back to when Harper picks the apple from the garden at the film’s start, representing the original sin of Eve taking the apple from the forbidden tree. Many in the church throughout human history have blamed Eve for the original sin that led to the fall of man since she picked from the tree first and then offered it to Adam.
In the context of Men, the Vicar blames Harper for the temptation he feels towards her when in reality, he still has the choice to not act just as Adam did. James has the choice not to kill himself to spite Harper, but he does, placing the guilt of his act on Harper. The Vicar’s temptation and James’ death are not Harper’s fault because she didn’t rob them of their choice to do the right things. They acted fully, knowing what they were doing was wrong without any outside influence.
The scene with the Vicar ties into the Naked Man. In the church, there are stone pillars of the Green Man. The Green Man represents the cycle of rebirth during spring, often seen as a symbol of fertility. In Men, when Harper strolls the nearby luscious green forest (the mythological residence of the Green Man), she encounters the Naked Man, who follows her home and is later arrested by a Police Officer who is Rory Kinnear as well.
After his release, the Naked Man dons the Green Man persona and carves leaves into his face to mirror the stone pillar. When Harper and the Police Officer meet in the pub later, he tells her he let the man go due to a lack of grounds to keep him. Harper is alarmed, but the Police Officer doubts whether the Naked Man was ever really after Harper, making her feel egotistical for thinking the vagrant was simply after her. The Police Officer illustrates the difference in perspective. To Harper, the Naked Man following her is a threat, but to the Police Officer, it’s harmless and amusing. With this, Garland may be saying that the lack of perspective on the part of men connects to the shared trauma of women in society.
Men’s Stomach Churning Ending
The ending of Men is the stuff of nightmares. Each of the Men attack Harper and attempt to keep her trapped in her home. The Naked Man breaths spores into Harper’s face, one of the Bar Patrons and the Police Officer chase her around, Samuel breaks in after having his arm sliced in half by Harper, and Geoffrey runs her down with a car. Samuel blames Harper for the wound, and the Vicar approaches her in the bedroom, blaming her for the assault he’s about to commit against her. Harper kills the Vicar, and the Naked Man enters the home with an extended belly. The Naked Man begins giving birth to each of the Men played by Rory Kinnear, one after the other, with each taking on the characteristics of James’ wounds from his impaled hand to broken foot. The last man child that is birthed is James. James sits beside Harper, and she asks him what exactly he wants, to which he says, “her love.” Alex Garland has repeatedly said that there are many meanings to the ending that the viewer can come up with, but ultimately Garland’s inspiration for the film all stems back to the Green Man.
The Green Man statues exist throughout the UK. It’s a symbol that many see daily but often don’t bat an eye at. In this sense, Garland is talking about the ingrained elements of sexism in society that have persisted over thousands of years, if not all of human history. The Green Man, being a fertility god, birthed generations of men in the film, with each being more weak and dysfunctional than the last, with a shared lack of personal responsibility and blame towards the temptation of women for their own actions.
James blames Harper for his suicide, Samuel for an injury he received attempting to break in, and the Vicar blames her for “what’s between her legs,” tempting him and supposedly forcing him to assault her. This comment by the Vicar traces back to the church scene from earlier, where a second statue of Sheela Na Gig is shown.
The statue of Sheela Na Gig shows a woman with a swollen vulva and can be seen in churches across Europe. Some think of the statue as a vessel for warding off evil entities, but alternatively, it can be seen as a symbol of fertility or as a warning against lustful temptations. In the context of Garland’s film, the statue symbolizes how men have placed blame on a women’s genitals for their violent actions against them and that it is the women who are the evil ones for “tempting them” as opposed to them for committing the act. These accusations and transgressions by the Men trap Harper in the country home, unable to escape, just as James trapped her by blaming her for his own suicide.
Ultimately though, Harper realizes that James doesn’t understand what love is and that his own weakness and false ideas drove him to imprison and traumatize her, just as religious, cultural, societal, and political norms have trapped women for centuries due to men historically refusing to rectify their mistakes and passing the blame and projections of their own failure onto women.
In the end, Harper leaves James and her guilt behind. In a post-credit scene, Harper’s friend Reilly arrives to catch her smiling outside the house. What’s interesting is that Reilly is pregnant, and some have speculated that it is James’ baby, but it is more likely that it is Garland commenting on the rebirth that spring provides and the chance it brings to rectify and continue the cycle of generational trauma.
Garland’s messaging may be controversial as it attempts to answer for generations of character flaws in Men that have led to their continued torment and trapping of women, tracing back to Adam and Eve’s original sin. Regardless of one’s opinions on the matter, Garland tells his narrative in an unsettling and visually traumatizing way that is so unique its ideas are worthy of discussion.
