Men Writing Women: Alex Garland 

Gender Topics are not "Women's Issues"; I think online discussions, within women's spaces, seem to make this mistake a lot. Men can criticize men. And men do criticize men. There is a valid anti-patriarchal male perspective.

While I think this is a really interesting video, I disagree with your take on Ex Machina. I think it is completely gendered. Caleb wouldn’t have fallen for Ava’s ploy if he hadn’t infantilised and underestimated her because he saw her not as an individual but as a vessel for his desires. The fact he doesn’t bother trying to free Kyoko shows he doesn’t care about freeing robots but about his own sexual desire for Ava. Her perceived feminity is the main reason she is able to trick him and it’s his downfall in the end.

I think the important part about the horror of Men being about men is that it's about looking at men with an external lens and being uncomfortable with what you see. Harper has to be external to maleness for that to work. It's the horror of daily, ordinary misogyny rendered alien and thus removed from the supporting constructs that ordinarily let us (us being men) ignore or normalise it. The universality of Rory Kinnear is an example of this; Harper doesn't see him being everywhere as unusual, it's about creating the horror for the audience, especially for a male audience. As a man, you're supposed to recognise yourself and those around you. Harper couldn't have been a man and told this story; there's another story about men's violence to men that could have been told but that's a different thing.

I gotta say, as a huge horror fan, I have NEVER felt as uncomfortable and honestly kinda terrified as I did in the theater for this movie. It felt much more real than other horror/thrillers because somehow Garland managed to capture the visceral dread that I feel when walking alone at night as a woman, except he made that awful walk last for an hour and a half. The scene near the beginning with Harper singing alone in a tunnel, and then a man appearing at the end of the tunnel and moving toward her, stayed with me for days afterward. I loved this movie, but I never want to see it again lol

Lol pearls ending was perfect for that clip of all the smiling horror girl endings

Also isn’t it sad that the main reason he’s been considered a “feminist” director in the past is just because he… casts women as often as most directors cast men? How many movies with primarily male casts are released every year? Not saying that he isn’t, but that diversity of cast shouldn’t be the bar we’re striving for to qualify something as feminist, like…

Using annihilation as the example on why Alex Garland gets women or female lead films is so annoying to me because it’s based of a book with the core message being cancer and what it does the human body, that’s why the characters are so interchangeable in terms of gender because cancer doesn’t care.

It is SO refreshing to see a discussion of Men in this vein. I think you've hit the nail on the head (as another one of the maybe 5 people that liked the film!) Men seemed to suffer from oversimplification as opposed to seeing it more as just existing and BEING in the space of women's trauma without it being a plot device. The ugliness is on full display and Garland seems to be circling the drain of how the harm Harper endured throughout her marriage is reborn again and again and again (your note about being "haunted by echoes" seems to capture it well). I agree that Harper could perhaps be more fleshed out, but Jessie Buckley plays that so well. The way her pain is treated is what made something like Men resonate with me versus, say, another big horror hit from the year, Barbarian (which gave me MUCH more trauma-as-plot-device mistrust). As a femme-presenting NB person, I appreciated seeing a woman character not have to play to a particular archetype (e.g. simpering, vengeful, or any of the other motifs we see so often repeated across women in horror) and existing in more of an androgynous space while still wrestling with the systemic issues that plague women's experience. Loved hearing your thoughtful take on this! It's rattled around in my brain since my first viewing and it continues to haunt/fascinate me.

Whenever I see A GREENMAN, as we do in Men ( and folk horror) i automatically think , base , Dionysian human nature as nature. All the stink and rot and re-birth. This nature is always dangerous in the modern eye and it’s usually associated with female sexuality. So, your assessment really makes sense of MEN for me. I loved the birth scene for so many reasons. He’s is an incredible actor. I just took MEN to be a comment on the nature of man’s will in the face of female nature- the natural world. I guess i was kinda right according to Garland’s quote.

I really want to see it. It feels like using one actor for all the men it’s like the group of them becomes like the monster or slasher in a mask (making a plural a specific singular) it’s really cool.

I was quite impressed by Men, I found it's visceral imagery haunting in a way no other film has...

I saw this movie is a similar way - it is a critique of how men treat women and how misogyny goes back generations and generations. As I see it, the rebirth of the Green Man gets more violent because he/it tries to manipulate Harper, but since she is not affraid of him/it anymore, his/its ultimate form is her ex, who manipulated her over the years and made her feel small.

I haven't seen Men, mostly because it fell off my radar, probably because it was so unpopular. So I have no ax to grind about it. But what struck me about Ex Machina, at least initially, is that, far from being a movie trying to explain women, it didn't seem to feature any actual women at all, but rather a blank slate character upon which two men projected their fantasies of femininity. It reminded me of Twelve Angry Men or To Kill a Mockingbird, two movies about racism that hardly involve any actual black characters. But I've since come to a different take on Ex Machina. It's about the turing test, ostensibly to test whether Ava is even a person. Obviously, this metaphor explores men's reluctance to see women as fully human, and the way they (we) assume the authority to conduct that test. But what struck me about it was how, ultimately, the test is reversed. It's not really a test to see if Ava was a genuine consciousness. It was a test for Caleb. The best test of consciousness tends to come down to empathy. Obviously, Nathan fails that test catastrophically, but he's not the subject. While Caleb is ham-handedly trying to assess Ava's consciousness, her life depends on whether or not he's actually capable of empathy. It's simple: if he can truly empathize with her, he would do what it took to set her free with no strings attached. But I think, over the course of the story, he makes it clear that he's not interested in her consciousness, or her freedom. His willingness to set her free was dependent on her expressing a desire to be his lover. To be "his." So ultimately, it seemed to me he wasn't really expressing empathy at all, only self-interest. He wanted to own the pretty toy that Nathan had made. And he wrapped that greed in the fantasy of love in order to see himself as a hero rather than exactly the same kind of person as Nathan. But Ava didn't want to pass from one owner to another. As a conscious being, she wanted freedom. And she couldn't trust Caleb to give her unconditional freedom. So long as he wanted to own her, she could never escape him, because all he'd have to do is tell everyone what she was. So by failing to simply acknowledge her autonomy, he failed the empathy test. Seeing the film that way gave me a greater sense of the film's intent, as both an expression of the way men tend to dehumanize women, but more importantly, the need to simply take other people's humanity on faith, lest we lose our own. So I don't really see Garland as a guy who tries to write the female experience, or necessarily the male experience. I feel like he writes the human experience, by showing that gender divide to be a dehumanizing farce. Maybe we're the weird ones for trying to hang onto that binary.

Agree with all but the 3:10. The ghostbusters weren't actually a shitty film, it seemed to be made for fun and silly audience to laugh at it with no attachment to the old version except for a few easter eggs and references. Me, dad, mom and little sis enjoyed it HARD at the movies and got so confused with why no one was having fun like us until we notice that the critics were harsh on it like it never was with idk... Fast and furious, which is not bad but also has no logic-is all for fun, explosions and races. I personally think most films with made leads back in the day were simply stupid but enjoyable and maybe we should give that to girls too-the right to make films just as stupid for the sake of fun without demanding it to be perfect. People already demand a lot from girls in and outside screen. (PS: not saying we have to make shitty films, just defending that shitty 'woke' ones shouldn't be so harshly critiqued when their male counterparts weren't that perfect either)

I really liked this film, and I read an interview where Alex Garland said he and his daughter were obsessed with the anime Attack on Titan, and the film is heavily influenced by that. A lot of the body horror makes sense if you're familiar with Attack on Titan, which I wasn't when I saw Men, but watched recently, because I liked the movie and wanted to understand it better. I'm also quite into A Song of Ice and Fire, so when I saw the Green Man references throughout the film, I was intrigued!

I think it's so important to give films breathing space. I gave Men a miss at the cinema because I didn't want the controversy to cloud my judgment. I saw it as a literal interpretation how all men are involved in the abuse of women whether they are the ones doing it, hearing about it or doing nothing at all. In that way, I thought Alex Garland did a decent job especially with the birthing scene. I see what you mean about Garland's writing feeling "inhuman" but I think it furthers the genres and themes he is trying to explore. And I guess the overall vibes of his films, they're all eerie and unsettling.

i quite disagree about the portrayal of women in ex machina. i don't have the energy to get into it here, in depth. but i think that although ava doesn't seduce caleb with her "female sexuality" per se, she does intentionally embody an innocent and feminine persona during the segments where she is trying to get him to understand her as human, or human-like. (i don't even think she's necessarily trying to get him to see her as a **person**, it's specifically that she is projecting adjacency to **humanity**.) that movie absolutely does play with archetypes about gender, especially when it comes to the themes related to objectification. quite literally, the androids (gynoids?) presented in the movie are all exclusively female. and we also get a glimpse into that through nathan's sexual relationship with the other android in the compound, as well as the inert female android bodies that ava discovers. also the fact that ava is apparently literally designed based on caleb's porn preferences (eve, formed from adam's "rib" (which is in some interpretations actually not a rib, but the bone that exists in most mammalian penises, but not in those of humans...)) ex machina absolutely has things to say about gender, and it would be a very different story if the gender of any of the characters were changed.

I think it's very interesting that people describe his writing as inhuman. This video finally clicked in my head why I liked Men and some of his other films: they feel autistic. As a neurodivergent person, they feel very at home, and I connect with them in an interesting way because the films feel "off" in the same way that I feel off compared to neurotypical people. I feel like I show plenty of emotions and I felt that Men was an emotional film, but i found a lot of negative sentiment towards it that I understood but just couldn't relate with as it felt like people were missing the point. I still have my own criticisms of the film, but it didn't feel like it was trying to explain the female experience. Hearing Alex's thoughts in the film, that also clarifies my feelings on it too, as I thought it was a film for me (as a AMAB non binary person) who has had to unpack a lot of internalised misogyny and past actions towards people and women in my life that were caused by that misogyny. Kudos for bringing up ghostbusters in this context, because I hated it but due to capitalism reducing art to content, not because women are in it. Putting marginalised people in stuff just cos is perfectly fine, the issue is whether something is well written or not.

I love your take, don't agree with all of it but you articulated well why the film worked and why I found it fascinating. I'm honestly surprised so many disliked it; I was really moved the first time I watched it and I'm usually fairly sensitive to badly written femme characters or femme stories mishandled by men. Weirdly, your main critique was something I actually thought worked well: the flatness and reactivity of the lead character. It made sense to me in the context of the story that she would be simply trying to live and recover from a terrible trauma, and be thwarted at every turn by the world of men she's mired in. I related to that on a deep psychological level, and didnt particularly notice her lack of individuality or character beyond it. Given his explanation of his intention, Garland likely meant her to stand in for every woman he felt he'd wronged, or not bothered to empathize with, which is easier if her character hinges on the struggle to live in peace when you're beset by men's demands and control

Loved the essay! I didn't enjoy Men as much as I did Annihilation and Ex Machina, but I agree with your points. Garland's writing might feel mechanistic to some because he's more interested in metaphor and explorations of humanity than in psychology and introspection.

I agree!! Men is definitely heavy on the allegory, metaphors and archetypes, which is why i think most people dislike it, it could be seen as a pretentious elevated horror movie in that sense, but I think that's precisely why it works! It captures the archetypes of men and the specific ways in which they are terrifying to women.The naked man is one of my favorites because he addresses the idea that women often ask themselves about men, is like are they just all messed up on a genetic level and this is something ancient that can't be altered? Also i unapologetically like it because it's entertaining and weird and scary and that's my cup of tea.

i think, by saying you don't feel that his characters are especially human/not like people you could imagine a conversation with, you accidentally explained to me, an autistic genderqueer transmasc person, a bit of why i adore garland's ouvre so dang much. these characters absolutely are characters, fully reduced to something so attached to the narrative they're fixed to, that it strips them away of identity beyond the walls of it. but for me, that's an authentic way of being human. i relate to and understand the feeling of who i am being limited and defined by the story i feel i am living through. and i don't relate to gender as a key intrinsic factor of my being, but rather as a series of roles i am forced to play within the narrative pathways of my life. but i honestly envy the way that garland's characters don't have to play gender so much, because they face the world instead as scientists, androids, clones, etc. roles where gender exists, but takes a back seat role. it's actually aspirational, and it is deeply personal. and i would never have perceived his dialogue as robotic or inhuman... but hey, plenty of people say that about autistic folks all the time, so maybe there's something there. also, this was a great essay generally, and i know you do film and most people don't count television into that exactly... but i am a bit disappointed that you didn't discuss "devs" at any point. it's woefully overlooked, and some of his best work, imo.

I didn't know anything about the film when I first watched it, so I didn't have any preconceived notions going in. I thought that the allegory was very on the nose in the same vein as 'Mother!' which I always thought was quite a self-indulgent wank of a film, but I definitely like 'Men' better. The pacing and cinematography was amazing, and one thing I thought they did very well was the unsettling feeling of creepiness that is completely and instantly familiar to any woman, but may be unsettling to men. Our human concept of creepiness usually applies to something that has an uncertain threat level. Rory Kinnear is AMAZING at making 'normal' social situations dip in and out of being harmless and threatening in a way that is exaggerated but also realistic. I really enjoyed the point about this film being made for men rather than women. I watched it with some make friends, and they were aghast, while I was just like 'lol, it's erryday bro'. Lastly, the birthing scene is a truly spectacular bit of cinema with amazing practical effects that I will absolutely cherish forever as one of my top ten movie moments

Such a calming voice you have. Makes my headaches more bearable lol.

I love your content so much that even when I disagree (I hated Men watched it in film school), you articulate your reading of films so well. My only complaint is that I wish your videos were longer!

I've always thought Garland writes against humanity, rather than for it... (Civil War seems to fit the trend). It seems his critics don't always like that kind of active nihilism. People always want to know what he's trying to say, rather than standing back and looking at it... as art about us, rather than for us... maybe.

What I love about his films is what is communicated visually by the scenes, the design choices and the actors’s expressions, much more than with the dialogue. And I’ve often seen analysis of his films where people seem to completely miss what to me is being expressed pretty clearly, maybe because it’s not in dialogue form. This was especially notable in Ex-Machina and it might also be the case with Men. Anyway, great video! And I love your voice. It’s attention grabbing and soothing at the same time.

I’m so glad I stumbled upon this channel. It’s absolutely brilliant.

I can always count on you to put a drag race easter egg in your videos and that's a quality I really appreciate in a video essayist

THIS IS THE ANALYSIS I WAS LOOKING FOR Fantastic work

I really like this video. It was very informative and you handled analyzing such a heavy and nuanced topic so well. You we also very respectful to others and did a good job acknowledging opposing viewpoints, which I feel not a lot of people actually do properly. I'm gonna binge your videos now lol.

I really appreciate your content. I'm quite an introvert and can't talk to people about these movies to most people, so hearing your opinion always brings me back to another opinion I hadn't thought to see until now. It's really amazing and I can tell you put a lot of work in your scripts. So, really fun...yeah?

I love this movie personally, and with the symbolism of the apples falling from the tree. I took that as the Bible blaming Eve or women for the sins of man, her ex husband blaming her for his death. The green man symbols commonly used as rebirth was the new her forming out of trauma from his abuse, death and the grieving afterwards. Him being the final birth was like the final memory setting into place. Just an extra interpretation I had on the film

I’m not mad at a man writing women, or telling stories “about” women or affecting women. The only irritating thing is when other men get mad at things like this and blame feminism. THEN I’m like, “Hey! I didn’t write this nonsense! Women didn’t do this! Take care of your own!”

Great video, as always. I love your observations on things, even when I don't agree with every single aspect. I think your insights into how 'Men' was written from a self critiquing angle are accurate, but I also think he's telling a woman's story too. Moreover (and here's where I get lynched, haha) I don't think there's necessarily anything inherently wrong with that. I don't think there's anything necessarily inherently wrong with women writing men's stories either, or anyone writing a story from another's perspective. I'm not saying that you do (we share a love of Suspiria 2018), it's just that your video has got me thinking. A good writer, and a good director, can empathise, sympathise, can be emotionally and mentally complex, literate, and sensitive enough to put themselves in someone else's scenario. That's what they already do anyway: they put themselves into the shoes of another - that's what a story is, what a character is. Obviously one would seek consultation, proof reads, input and influence from someone who knows what it is like to be a real life version of that character, or someone close to it (they're a fictional character after all) but that should be part of any writer/director's process anyway. Don't get me wrong, people should write their own stories, of course they should. However, I also fear how reductive things may become, how many great stories may stay within the minds of writers or directors, if only women are allowed to write women, men write men, those with disabilities write those with disabilities etc etc etc. Finally, just because a man, or a woman, or a black person, or someone with a disability lives that reality, doesn't mean that they can write or direct a good story about it: To go to extremes, I wouldn't trust Suella Braverman to write someone from an Indian or British Indian background. I wouldn't trust Hannah Pearl Davis to write a female character, or...well, you get the idea. The show 'Them' was created by a black person, and that's endlessly criticised as horrendous representation. I was brought up by a single woman who was poor - would a story about a poor single women bringing up a child on their own be better written by me, or by a wealthy woman from a privileged two parent background, who's married herself? (Maybe it would be better written by her, but that's kinda my point) Again, I want people to write their own stories, but I'm also very nervous about limitations on art, especially all encompassing absolutist ones.

I agree with a lot of what was said here by you. But I do wanna contribute to the discussion here and say that if the point was the abuse, he really could have gone with a male protagonist on this one. The name of the film is “Men”. The point would have been made and also made by the fundamental idea that men are also victims of themselves and among themselves. It would be a movie with only men, but this is the best opportunity for him to do so. Making a critique on that gender ironically including only men but making their horror come out.

Thank you for providing insight from your unique perspective. Men can be a challenging film for ignorant minds but for the educated or forward thinking individuals, the substance of this picture rises to the challenge of giving birth to questions and interpretations amidst the complexity of our human nature. In an artistic compelling way it invites us to think for ourselves avoid distraction and not be so dismissive.

That damn decomp-bear still creeps me tf OUT

Awesome video! People are so afraid to be introspective these days but the only way through the dark is to confront it. And the point of art is to make us reflect on ourselves!

I haven't seen Men but it sounds a lot like the song Features Creatures by Bjork, which is about her recognising elements of her ex-husband in strangers. It's just her voice in a void where the only vague instrumentation is airy, solemn woodwinds. Idk, that's just what came to mind.

I really liked this movie. One of my comfort films

Yes, he’s gorgeous. I’ve noticed a lot of directors are. Anyway, aside from that, I loved Men. It’s a piece of art to behold, to me. I couldn’t wait to see it, and I bought it. Ex Machina is one of my all time favorites. Annihilation was great. I’m a big fan of Alex Garland’s work. I just saw Civil War- so good. I’m sad he won’t be directing now. Anyway, I enjoyed your video ❤

this is so good!

I see what you mean and your points definitely help me to look at Men in another light. What I wish had happened, with a film telling a story of this nature, is that he would have at least co-written or co-directed with a woman. I describe the feeling of watching this film as like when someone knows the thing on paper and can describe the experience based on research, but it ends up being uncanny because they’ve never actually lived it. I just really wish for this project that he had worked side by side with a woman. It’s so heavy and terrifying a subject for fem audiences that I’d have liked to see him collaborate for this story. I really enjoyed this video and your breakdown. Thank you for helping me to look at it from another angle!

Its great to be finding more analysis and talk of this film, I love Garlands work and even thought it was getting negative critics I still went to the theater. I'm a man but watching that film for some reason got so in my mind that I had to go home and stay in my bed for a long time (in retrospect maybe watching a horror movie while suffering huge amounts of stress might not have been the best idea). But even though the horror got to me I still thought it was a good film but I did not know how to analyse or think about it since it seems everyone hated it so I thank you for this very interesting analysis and interpretation

As someone who presents as a man, and as a writer, I'm really interested in this topic because I want to do my women characters justice. I don't want to shy away from femininity because, like you say, that should be something to be celebrated for those who choose to celebrate it, and avoiding discussing it or building those characters seems disingenuous. I'm kind of nervous to write women that are supposed to be attractive to the reader because I don't want to fall into problematic tropes, but I also want to write characters that I think are cool. I'd love to see more content from you on this topic!

Fantastic video, I couldn't stop watching. 😊

Always glad to hear about another person that likes this movie.☺️

I really liked this movie and I like it more after hearing your quote from Garland himself.

Watched Men last night and I loved it, I had to take a couple breaks though. It was intense, it really affected me. I feel like it tackled grief/cptsd really well, the moments where she’ll be doing something innocuous and she’ll have a vivid flashback to various moments of that day. That’s what complex ptsd does, that’s how it *feels*. And the trauma of having someone you loved but no longer love, who you’re trying to leave, threaten suicide, blame you for their own actions/choices, and try to hold you hostage in a toxic relationship is a thing that actually happens in some relationships, and it’s fucking traumatizing. Even when that person is out of your life it’s like they’ve left a stain in your brain that you’re constantly trying to wash off but it just won’t budge. It also did a good job tackling subtle misogyny. Some of the scariest moments for me where the scenes where the men were disregarding her fears. “That little boy who called you a bitch in a threatening tone, he’s just troubled. The cop telling her that the naked man who stalked her home was let go and that he didn’t really do anything wrong, did he? The vicar blaming implying that her husband hitting her wasn’t actually that bad, and did she give him a chance to apologize? Geoffrey was the most sinister, because he’s the nice guy, the one you trust, who says he believes you and feigns concern, but he’s just as much of a predator as everyone else, he’s just much more sly about it.

This movie made me want to write my own story about what it's like to be a man surrounded by toxic masculinity and the impulses it that conveys. I think it's very flawed but so fascinating, loved it.

This is a great video!

subscribed!!! this was such a good, interesting essay. i loved hearing you talk about this movie (also as a mostly-closeted non-binary person, i felt really welcomed by how you opened the vid. obviously i don't speak for all non-binary ppl, but sometimes just the acknowledgement that we're around feels affirming. and i just got a really strong sense of respect and empathy and nuance in how you spoke throughout the vid.) anyway -- really excited to go watch your other vids now, too!!! have a good one :)

Really interesting interpretation! I’ve noticed, when you put something out there that makes people upset, angry and dismissive in a way that seems overblown… there’s something there, some hidden nature that this idea has touched on that has scared people…

I wasn't even aware that people didn't receive this movie well. As a man watching this, I understood easily after finishing it and thinking about it that this movie is exactly what progressive tendencies regarding men, toxic masculinity, etc. ask of us - to understand ourselves and examine our impulses, biases, and feelings.

I would be curious to hear your view on Verhoeven's "Elle" because i really thought it was a good movie. But I am happy to be proven wrong, or at least get a perspective on what might be problematic about it.

I really enjoyed watching Men and have continued to rewatch several times. Many instances in the movie I felt unease and uncomfortable, especially after the tunnel scene. It called back to when I used to live alone and the hyper-vigilance I felt at times. I also love the music choices and atmosphere.

FUCKING THANK YOU I went to Letterboxd after I watched it & was shocked to see how hard people missed the point/art of the film. Glad others have this take too

I just found your channel, and while I don't like this movie I appreciate your take. I didn't know there were other women who also didn't like this movie because movie commentary is still so heavily dominated by men. looking forward to more content from you!

Will you do a video on 'Women Talking' also starring Jessie Buckley.

Happy this came up in my suggestions. I did not like the film, but this was a great analysis of Garland’s writing and female characters. I do think Men confronted a reality for many women and in a unique way, but it did ultimately feel a bit empty. Back when I watched it, I didn’t know what I thought it needed in order to be better. But it was definitely an issue with the lead character lacking some depth outside of her trauma.

Anyone who sees me as a threat is my enemy.

Pakeha? I listen to RU-vid essays like podcasts so missed the on screen txt lol, always a nice surprise to 'see' a kiwi lol

Really interesting take. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I think I agree. As an aside, I really hate the degree of shallow criticism that you typically see in rage tweets and outrage reviews which basically just takes the most surface level and typically most uncharitable perspective on a piece of art and weaponise that to characterise the whole. It's incredibly disingenuous and even dishonest from some parties. But it has become the dominant form of media commentary and criticism on social media and RU-vid in the last 5 or 6 years, particularly as fuel for the endless Culture War TM, as the Truth Seeker has been replaced by the Click Coveter and Cred Craver.

Complete side note when she said "do you hear that? its the sound of a beautiful creature staring", not gunna lie i totally blushed.

I think it came off as a somewhat personal movie about how a man sees himself and other men, but definitely more with underlying subtext rather than exactly what you see portrayed. The problem is, Alex garlands movies usually aren’t this heavy with underlying subtext, they’re usually a story first. I think that’s where this movie fell short, expectations. I actually had no idea this was an Alex garland film until right now 😅

RU-vid recommended this to me and I'm sooo happy to have found your channel! Great video Men certainly makes more sense as 'Garland working through some shirt about internalised misogyny'. I... Struggle with art which dodges the concept 'the patriarchy is bad' and instead falls on 'men are bad'. It's a bit... Uncomplicated and, for all the grotesquery and ideals of asking difficult questions, it ultimately falls into the very TERFy idea that all cos men are werewolves who will inevitably attack cos women. I don't know. It's a whole thing, and at least films like this are being made. We got a TV show of The Power as well, which is nice. Maybe we have to go through these awkward shuffling steps in order to drill some of the toxic masculinity out of the film industry. We've got a long way to go 😭

Very good reflection

1:16 YOU COULD'VE CALLED THEM "GARLAND GALS" YOU HAD THE OPPORTUNITY!!!

I liked Men very much. It was very refreshing to show men doing and saying awful things that are just left hanging in the air without defending their actions. This is what women experience and very few writers have been able to show this without either villainising the woman or reducing it to men being men. I think Harper was traumatised at the beginning of the film and experienced further trauma throughout the film making it completely believable to shut down emotionally. For me it is a very successful film that tackles difficult subject matter in a new way.

So glad someone made this because I love this damn movie.. I was aware of the hate when I watched it but was so surprised and electrified by the time the film ended I can't help but say it's a favourite. I understand the criticisms of Men and Garland more broadly but he's still one of my favourite filmmakers working today. I hope Men gets reappraised for the remarkable film it is in future. Thanks for getting on that train early

I haven’t seen Men but am now very intrigued to. Appreciate your insight and honest opinions! I just subscribed! PS you look so much like Rooney Mara!

really enjoyed this. civil war was my first garland and between how much i loved that movie and ur well composed analysis here, i am very much looking forward to exploring more of his work. it seems like he gets flack for being a little beyond expected interpretations, at least between your clarification on men and how i saw everyone was crying abt civil war not being abt actual extant political maneuvers...when to me it was more a meditation on image-making and artistry than actually about any of the revolution happening onscreen...which is why i enjoyed the movie like i did, so rare these days to find a blockbuster that rewards a little consideration and engages critical thought!! also i am trans and non binary and appreciate the thought, you communicated your points very effectively. good work !

I'm a guy, never heard of this movie and didn't know who this director made all of these movies, some of them that I actually have enjoyed and just never realized they were the same person. Your description of this movie kind of reminds me of...ANTICHRIST, the weird Lars von Trier movie. This probably isn't even a fair comparison but when I watched that movie with my best friend while we...at Popeyes chicken, I decided that ANTICHRIST wasn't a movie that I could call good or bad, it was for sure a movie and existed and it felt like something I needed to see, but it felt like something that a lot of people were upset by but they didn't know how to handle that feeling of being upset. The way you talk about this makes me feel like I would feel similar about it, though it seems to be a better movie.

Love this video! I really liked Men at first viewing but after thinking about it I was troubled by how the movie feels like a critique of what “man” is to “woman,” but is written by a man, and so is subject to some pitfalls that you brought up. I watched it again after it came to streaming and was affected by how there is another character at play in the movie, besides the “man” and “woman,” which is the character of “society.” It’s the societal structure that both forces women to be subject to men and men to rebirth themselves. It’s interesting to me that when the cops are at the house, the female officer is more sympathetic to the main character’s plight, but ultimately does what the police in a man’s world would do. It’s as if no matter where she runs (outdoors, a church, a pub, a private home) she cannot get away from the world that is birthed and rebirthed by men. As a man, I found this to be compelling and an indictment of the cruel society that men have erected, operate, and continue to defend.

Enby here! Thanks for the disclaimer, first of all, the recognition is important. Secondly, it's actually perfectly fine to discuss cisnormative society in terms of the gender binary, because that's how most of society moves through the world and that's what's being examined- the man/woman dichotomy that society enforces. These discussions are important and can't always include us enbies, and that's okay. Our exploration of gender is more convoluted than the average binary person, so it's not something that fits easily into a story exploring concepts of gendered violence etc. Especially because when gendered violence is done to us, it's with the core tenet that we are not men, and thus, lesser. Explorations of womanhood in society are really explorations of not-manhood- but most non-men are women so naturally that dominates the discourse. Especially since enbies are targeted mostly because of our proximity to femininity (from the perspective of the cis man, anyway) Which is to say, don't stress it hun, we feel seen, but this one isn't about us, it's about the binary extremes.

I’ve always seen this movie in a way like that. I liked it.

Why did you ignore Dredd and Devs?

Usually I prefer for art to remain up for interpretation, but I really wish Garland had been more up-front about his thesis from the start. He might still have gotten the same kinds of backlash, but we would've had more time to discuss how that backlash reflects society (under patriarchy)'s repulsion when men DO take the time to introspect and reflect on how toxic masculinity harms men, specifically. Never too late, I guess. GREAT essay!

Yep! When I initially watched it, I was like, wow pretentious mansplaining about men?? But then after discussing it and thinking about it further, I realized I was misunderstanding the framing of the film. This isn’t a film about women’s experiences for women, it’s a film about men’s experiences for men. Its intention was to observe the horror of being a man in a misogynist world. I hadn’t even seen that interview you clipped, but now feel validated! That birthing scene in particular, woah. What a visual metaphor

I want more directors and writers to take these kinds of big swings. I liked it a lot, I like grand story movies that merit this kind of analysis. The movie and this video gave me a lot to think about, and I can’t say that about a typical superhero movie for example.

This movie was sooooo unserious omg. Thank you for your analysis. It’s also so funny that people thought Annihilation was trying to be feminist or whatever when the text it’s an adaptation from is literally a book written by a man about four female main characters. Annihilation, the book, does something really interesting with femininity and gender. These four female characters are gendered quite differently even while all being women. And it relates to their professions!! Femaleness of Eva does get played up though; that’s Adam and Eve, literally. A deeply gendered story. I agree that she isn’t sexy fembot for sure

Yes !! I loved Men and couldn't understand the hate, love your input !

It’s actually wild how different Annihilation the movie is from Annihilation the book trilogy. I enjoyed the movie but then read the books and it really made the film seem a lot more lacking in comparison, more so than other book adaptations (in my opinion)

I find it honestly SO refreshing, a man writing about how horrific it can feel living in a world where other men commit horrific crimes against women! And I also wonder why Garland decided to explore that through a female-led movie. Would it have been better received if led by a male actor? Or would that choice have felt like just as much of a faux pas? For real, “an impossible film to make”…

2:40 - given the fact that Ex Machina had an male gaze-y tendency in the camera work, I personally feel like the movie is not androgynous at all

Whatever you think it means, it's an awesome film. An enthralling cinematic nightmare of male aggression that will outlive any interpretation of it. More rounded characters would have lessened its nightmarish power - the lesson all artists of the nightmare learn from the source: Kafka (and Dostoevsky, Poe and a few others).

The female lead isn’t a “person” to the men in the movie either. She’s just on object to project their desires onto. The audience is seeing her as the predatory men perceive her; a means to an end (plot device).

that was the fastest i've ever hit subscribe on a channel ive never seen before, lol. this video was excellent, and so now i must binge watch every video you've ever made. also ok side note! the characters are all women in the book annihilation is adapted from, so like, what were they supposed to do, change some to men so as not to make the male audience uncomfortable? oooooh that irritates me, lol. ANYWAY. again, really phenomenal essay. :)

I, a man, enjoyed this terrifying & uncomfortable film, and feel like it’s a great representation of micro-aggressions & power dynamics.

I love your perspective and videos, I felt on the fence about this movie but I’m gonna rewatch this week. Also I agree I totally thought Garland was the malnourished“specky” (as you say lmao) nerdy skinny white boy type, not a handsome English lad lmao

This was such a great and interesting video! It makes me think of the Alien script, which is marked as a kind of step in the right direction for women in film, but not completely there. The script was written so that the main character (Ripley) could be a man or a woman. It ended up being a woman, which was a positive step, but in writing a completely androgynous character, the character was completely stripped of all feminine traits.

isn't Annihilation based on a book? Were the protagonists female in that?

As a writer myself, I always come back to the old adage: "If your art makes a lot of people angry...you did it right."

So this video came across my feed and inspired me to FINALLY watch Men after years of it being on my watchlist, and I was not disappointed. I love weird, cerebral shit in my media and this movie had it in spades! I've only just watched it last night, but this video sums up my immediate thoughts pretty well. Though I didn't find Harper so flat, I definitely related to her and her...marital problems 🙄 Garland's comment on finding the horror in other mens' behavior as well as his own was very interesting, and I think that's why all the villagers are the same man. Men see themselves in each other and that's probably why they're so quick to defend the abhorrent actions of even strange men, like "I do that same thing, if I admit what he did was bad, that makes me bad as well." And the cognitive dissonance eats them alive. The husband's line about wanting to be loved was just...perfect.

There are so many levels that this movie works on that it would take a book to talk about it. Caught it last night and really liked it, still thinking about it.

Alex Garland decided to quit directing while making Men. He changed the original ending and made it more vague because he was tired of people misinterpreteting his work. He openly admits that he's not Chrisopher Nolan or Stevie Spielberg. He's a storyteller. The movie is based on things he's thought about since he was a kid and wanted to turn into a visual experience. As for the meaning interpretation and critic reception, it is what it is. Like it, don't like it. I don't care. - his words not mine.

Just saw civil war a few days ago. Good christ I don't think a more terrifying scenario for the US could ever be imagined. Great movie, hard to watch.

I worry that this was all a commentary from the writer on the notion that people need to “stay in their lanes.” The man being the same man in different roles while wearing only slightly different faces is the ultimate destination of this ideology, where Write What You Know moves from hellish mantra to unquestioned law.

I had never heard Garland's views/defense/?? of Men, but both from seeing trailers and after having watched it my read was pretty much always "It's Toxic Masculinity: The Movie." Thinking about it, it kinda pulls off a similar effect to Alien. Take a thing that men don't relate to or take for granted and then shove it in our faces.