‘Thinking will come later, you should especially feel my film’

A film that is best judged by ‘the belly’. This is how British director and writer Alex Garland describes his folk horror film men† ‘A film experience that mainly works on an instinctive level, rather than a cerebral one. It’s about whether it makes you angry or reassures you. Either you reject or accept what you see. And that this is not so much the result of a thought process. That thought process will come later, perhaps. And it can also contradict what you felt before.’

In men hopes the young widow Harper (Jessie Buckley, of The Lost Daughter) to recover in an idyllic English cottage. She has to deal with something: her husband James committed a horrific suicide (or died?) after she wanted a divorce. But in the rustic village where she’s staying, she meets only odd, nasty, and wonderfully alike men, including the curious cottage landlord, a pushy priest, and a naked forest god roaming the garden.

men was received enthusiastically and with suspicion at the premiere at the Cannes film festival: was the procession of toxic men in the film feminist or pseudo-feminist horror? ‘I would like to tilt that question a bit’, responds Garland (52), video calling from England. ‘By disconnecting the question from the horror genre. My question would be: what does a non-feminist film look like? And would someone make such a film aware? Does that person wake up in the morning: ha, today I’m going to make a non-feminist film? That sounds to me like someone who wakes up and says: today I’m going to make a racist movie. So I don’t see the meaning of that label ‘a feminist film’. The more interesting question to me is how people can be feminist or non-feminist, or racist or non-racist, even without realizing it. Subconscious. But when someone asks me if I consciously wanted to make a feminist film, I just think: what the fuck should I have done differently?’

How did it start men†

‘By the green man, or the head of leaves. Images from antiquity found throughout Europe. You see them in churches, sometimes also in architecture as an ornament. And in England there are also many pubs that The Green Man to be named. I noticed. Suddenly I realized how much we are surrounded by that iconography, but at the same time we are quite unaware of it. I read about the differing interpretations of that green man, by neopagans and hippies: that he is a good natured forest god. But in the pictures, that man looks like he’s screaming, or very angry. Pretty scary actually, I didn’t see the good one like that. That discrepancy felt like something useful.’

Garland – pensive look, dark beard – first made his name as a writer. His acclaimed debut novel was published in 1996 The Beach, about an English backpacker and the search for a secret, pristine beach in Thailand. Already during the film adaptation by Danny Boyle, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, the novelist considered a move to Hollywood. “I walked onto the set and thought, ‘Wait a minute, these people look like they’re having fun! They are with a group, they talk and laugh in between shots. If you write a book, you sit on a chair for two years, alone. Film seemed less lonely to me. It wasn’t a creative choice, but a lifestyle choice.’

His first movie script was 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle’s successful 2002 post-apocalyptic zombie virus film, which returned to the spotlight with the outbreak of the pandemic. In 2016, Garland was nominated for an Oscar (Best Original Screenplay) for his directorial debut, the science fiction thriller Ex Machina†

Whenever you undertake something new, you succeed on the first try. Was that success?

‘Oh no, not at all. I remember walking into the bookstore and getting copies of it for the first time The Beach saw lying. And a kind of burst of pride expected in myself, the feeling that I had achieved something. Because it seemed to me to be something so improbable: a book of yours in the bookstore. But once I saw it, I felt nothing. It felt like someone else had written it. And I was almost embarrassed how I stood there. It felt like an affectation. And I have that feeling with everything now.

There’s only one movie of mine I’ve ever seen again, that was Dredd (Garland’s 2012 comic film adaptation) red† A friend of mine really wanted to see it, so I said turn it on. I could look at it on a technical level, but at the same time it felt like something very far away from me.

“It’s something strange about me, I know that. There are probably people who react very differently to their own work. But this is how I react. When I was younger, I imagined you collecting badges every time you wrote a book, made a movie, or wrote a song. Like a soldier with a chest full of medals. And I thought I’d be more satisfied with my life if I had six badges instead of four.’

You once suggested that just as you stopped writing novels before, you could also stop directing feature films. What’s up with that?

‘I think two factors are involved. One is that I am an atheist and believe I have only one life, which I should explore as much as possible. This is accompanied by a certain restlessness. In addition, work is something compulsive for me. I work really hard on something, like it matters. Then, when the project is over, I immediately throw myself into the next project.

“I started to wonder if it really mattered. Or was I just the donkey chasing a carrot on a stick? And now I’m trying to figure out where that compulsion comes from. Who am I trying to impress? Who am I kidding? What would life be like without being compulsive? I try to think about this as honestly as possible. What is the reward of all that work? We are also taught in school: that work, the work itself, is a virtue. But is that a good way of life?’

Did you enjoy the recordings of men†

Garland laughs. ‘I find shooting a film so difficult, so filled with doubts and obstacles, that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say I enjoyed it. But that play with the grammar of the horror genre and English mythology, that idea of ​​a green and pleasant place, that postcard-like version of the country, with rolling hills and honey-colored cottages everywhere, and then something with that fuck† Yes, I did get some pleasure out of that.’