Saturday, August 6, 2022

Men (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A young woman goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside following the death of her ex-husband.
Directed by Alex Garland. Starring Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, and Paapa Essiedu.

Men is the newest Alex Garland film, about a woman renting a house alone in the country to rest and recover after the traumatic death of her abusive husband. But as strange things begin to happen around her, she begins to realize her vacation won't be as restful as she expected. That's about all the details I want to get into, because the rest of the movie is a strange and surreal experience and probably best appreciated going in mostly blind as I did. This movie isn't getting nearly as much critical love as Garland's two previous features, but it worked for me as well, if not slightly better, than those two. The metaphor may be a little bit clumsy in its meaning but I found it extremely effective in its tone -- the *emotion* I got from this movie was, I think, exactly the emotion I was meant to get from it. It reminded me a bit of Titane in that it incorporated lots of strange visceral body horror, but here I knew what emotional state I was supposed to be in for it and the horror sustained me rather than turned me off. Garland is solidifying himself as one of my favorite filmmakers, and I can't wait to see what he does next.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Men > Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Men > Woman in the Dunes
Men < Castle in the Sky
Men > The Pawnbroker
Men > The Jungle Book (1967)
Men > The Holiday
Men > Moonrise Kingdom
Men < Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Men > Argo
Men > Glengarry Glen Ross
Men > Grease
Men > A Man for All Seasons
Final spot: #470 out of 3646, or 87%.

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