Men: Alex Garland Takes a Shot at the Patriarchy
Can’t live with them, can’t live without them?
Between March 2021 and March 2022, 198 women were killed in the UK. Ninety-five percent of the suspects charged were male. In his latest film, Alex Garland explores the horror of misogyny, in a quintessentially English setting. Jessie Buckley plays Harper, a woman who sees the gruesome aftermath of her husband’s suicide after she suggests they divorce. Escaping to a manor house in the countryside, she experiences a sort of purgatory where all of the residents are men and their abusive behaviour escalates from unsettling to threatening and finally, violent.
It’s a familiar cast of stock characters – the emotionally manipulative husband, the mansplaining country gent who plays her host, the dismissive policeman, and the lustful vicar to name a few. While each of these should have a protective role in society, every one of them threatens or endangers her in some way. The most curious of these characters is that of the ‘Green Man’ though, initially a flasher who looms stark naked in the garden behind Harper as she takes a work call.
Why are Men like this?
There’s no doubt that women are endangered by men, as the ONS figures sadly prove year on year. But why are Men like this? Garland offers little in the way of explanation, other than some clever symbolism. As Harper eats an apple from a tree on her arrival, we’re reminded of Genesis, where God decides to punish women with painful childbirth and that their husbands shall ‘rule over’ them. So even if the Church didn’t invent the patriarchy, it certainly reinforced it.
But Garland looks back further than the origins of Christianity, to the pre-Christian pagans. The only scrap we’re thrown on this is the baptismal font in the old church Harper visits. Many old English churches were built on existing pagan sites and some incorporated existing architectural features. Sculpted on one side of the font we have the image of the Sheela-na-gig, which seems to be a female fertility deity, spreading its female parts in a less than holy way! There’s something comical about seeing these figures in prudish English churches, but they can still be found today.
On the other side, we have the face of the mysterious Green Man. A male face overgrown with foliage, which also seems to be linked to fertility and rebirth. The flashing Green Man who stalks Harper becomes increasingly engulfed by foliage throughout the film. A naturist returning to nature, he oversees her spiritual journey as she overcomes these malevolent males. Removed from the Christian patriarchy, maybe this is the one male figure who has helped her in some way (despite the flashing).
Ultimately, an anti-climax
Finally, exhausted after this harrowing ordeal, Harper asks her husband’s mangled apparition, ‘what do you want from me?’ His desperate, pathetic answer is simply ‘your love’.
In the mystifying final scene, Harper’s sister Riley appears at the house, visibly pregnant. A smile illuminates Harper’s face as they see each other, making us wonder what the saga’s final message really is. Yes, men are annoying and even life-threatening, but we can’t get knocked up and continue making humans without them? Maybe the final irony of Men is the anti-climax.
Time and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
Rainer Maria Rilke
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.
