A Metaphor for the Monstrous: An Allegory of Patriarchy in Men
WARNING- Spoilers! I’d recommend watching the film before diving in.
Men follows Harper on a personal retreat into the pastoral English countryside following a personal tragedy. Seeking refuge in a small, quaint village, Harper tries to begin the process of healing in the wake of her husband’s sudden death. However, after the initial joy of the quiet, picturesque solitude has subsided, it becomes apparent that someone, or something, is stalking her. What begins as an itch at the nape of the neck, a flash in the corner of her eye, becomes a fully-fledged nightmare that will force her to confront her fears and exorcise the deep seated darkness within her.
What is clear about Men from the first viewing is that it is a film that is rife for interpretation. It is impossible to pin down all the ways in which people will view Harper, and the men she is targeted by, how they will interpret the strange symbolism and the deeper meaning of the narrative. This is something I find particularly delicious about horror generally, and folk horror in particular, as within the swirling symbolism and sinister woodlands, different monsters lurk for all of us. No film exists in a vacuum, and no viewer is able to see and interpret the story presented to them without watching it through the veil of their own experiences, traumas, and fears.
The experience of Harper is in many ways, universal. When we see her walking in the woods and experiencing pure joy at the start of a thunderstorm, it signifies her desire to feel small and insignificant after carrying the weight of being the centre of someone’s universe. The weight of caring, of being a necessary component for someone’s survival, is a millstone around the neck of many women, be that the weight of motherhood, or of a relationship with someone who needs you too much. When Harper refuses to bear this weight, when she puts herself first, there is punishment. The rest of the film is an exercise in excising the malignancy of the guilt that follows, a guilt that is not purely internal, as we see in her interactions with The Priest. Society blames her for James’ choices, as we so often see when men harm themselves, or others, it is always left to the women involved to bear the brunt of criticism.
There are many ways to interpret the men Harper comes into contact with, and what they may represent. The Priest can be interpreted as an embodiment of society’s war on women, as well as the obvious religious connotation. In the final act, when Harper is accosted by him in the bathroom, we see the expression of society’s enforced sexualisation of women, when she is told “you have made me think these things, that is your power.” Victim blaming at its most base level. That Harper has had no sexual interest or interaction with The Priest is beside the point, he has felt these feelings and they are her responsibility to manage now. His cruelty around her responsibility for James’ actions is a mirror for the guilt Harper feels, but also echoes the refrain that women are responsible for the choices of those around them, and have the duty to save men from themselves.
The Naked Man appears as a representation of the way women are at the mercy of and policed by, their environment and how they are allowed to occupy space. Harper is never just left alone, to be, one of the men is always poking at her, demanding her attention. When Harper is innocently enjoying her surroundings as she wanders through the woods alone, we see how her peace is stolen by the Naked Man. The ominous shadow at the end of the tunnel, blocking our exit, is a primal fear that is evoked masterfully in Men. When we see the silhouette emerge from the gloomy shadows at the end of the creepy, abandoned tunnel, it taps into something hidden deep in our DNA. The urge to flee washes over you, as you see that form take shape out of the blackness and it is impossible not to feel palpable dread. When he steps out from the tree line, his nakedness is an affront. Harper, unable to reconcile the shock of a naked man stalking her through the woods, does what so many of us do and starts a speedy shuffle across the field, still unwilling to acknowledge that something very strange is going on in this quaint little village. When he follows her to her temporary home and we see him watching her through the windows, as she chats to a friend, oblivious, it reminds us that we are not always aware of when we are being hunted and that our advancement towards modernity has removed much of the survival instinct our predecessors fought so hard to cultivate.
In the wake of this encounter, we see her interaction with the Police Officer, a repulsively apathetic avatar for the criminal justice system, echoing back to Harper all the ways in which the law does not seek to protect women from violence. His dismissal of her fears reminds the audience of all the cases that make it to the media, of women terrorised by stalkers and those who wish them harm, whose lives are treated as less than worthless by an uninterested legal system that only intervenes when it is far too late.
Despite all this tyranny, Harper maintains a sense of “fuck you” throughout, when she climbs up the embankment to escape the Naked Man, when James wants to look through her phone, she is defiantly incredulous that he would suggest such an invasion of privacy. In Harper, we see a woman determined not to be afraid, even though she is. Her choice to go to an isolated village and rent a large house alone in the wake of her grief speaks of defiance towards the potential dangers that lurk in unfamiliar houses. However, when she’s defiant in the face of James’ unreasonable request she finds the uncomfortable truth, for all that we are independent autonomous women who choose relationships with men who seem caring and empathetic, we are all only a punch away from being a crumpled lump on the kitchen floor. In this aspect of Men, there is the inherent vulnerability of the life of the modern woman on display, reminding us that violence is never more than an argument away. The flashback scenes with James evoke a horror that more extreme scenes could not. This could be any of us, in a similar situation, and the lack of dramatic flair only emphasises the mundane reality of manipulation and simmering violence.
There are well-worn elements of folk horror in Men, this should not be taken as a criticism, Infact, some of my favourite motifs are used throughout. We see the Naked Man transform throughout the film, gradually making cuts and filling these with leaves and twigs, crafting a mask of green that erupts from his flesh in a grotesque homage to the woodlands he lives in. This, alongside the surreal injury element of the finale, and that birthing sequence adds a body horror element that I adore. There is the small village itself, a place hidden from the outside world, with its crumbling church that is filled with luridly sexual iconography, gaping vaginal canals jostle alongside the Green Man, creating a picture of Christianity that is swaddled in older, more archaic traditions.
To return to that birthing sequence much has been made of it in previous reviews, not all of it positive. It could be argued that each iteration of man is another level of masculinity to fear, from the young teenage boy who’s just becoming and realising that he’s a threat; to the priest, a representation of the patriarchal culture Harper must reside within. Men giving birth to other men, alongside the ambiguous body horror element, could be interpreted, quite literally, as the role of the patriarchy in giving birth to toxic masculinity. But, finally, all roads lead back to James, to the root of Harper’s trauma and sadness. The men themselves could be interpreted as a metaphor for Harper’s undoubted PTSD after seeing her husband fall (or jump) and land so bone crunchingly onto railings. The fact that the injuries sustained by the various iterations of the men mirror those of James suggests we may have an unreliable narrator on our hands. This adds another layer of complexity to the film, one that is expertly managed by the cast.
Men is a weird, disturbing, visually sumptuous, occasionally surreal meditation on grief, guilt and sadness as well as a social commentary on the ways in which people coexist with each other. Much of the criticism of the film centres on its ‘man hating’ as though the depictions of the men are somehow so beyond the scope of ordinary lives as if to act as caricatures. Unfortunately, we know this is not the case. That is the real horror at the heart of Men, that none of these portrayals feel so fantastical as not to be believed.
