director/screenwriter
Neil LaBute
producers
Mark Archer
Stephen Pevner
cinematographer
Tony Hettinger
music
Karel Roessingh
Ken Williams
editor
Joel Plotch
cast
Aaron Eckhart (Chad)
Stacy Edwards (Christine)
Matt Malloy (Howard)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 97m
u.s.
release: 8/1/97
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official website
other neil
labute films
reviewed on this website:
- nurse
betty
- possession
- the shape of things
- the wicker man (2006)
- your friends & neighbors
|
While
we wait for Stanley Kubrick to finish his new film (that should
be, oh, any decade now), we can enjoy the work of his progeny.
Todd Haynes' Safe, Danny
Boyle's Trainspotting,
and Alexander Payne's Citizen Ruth have admirably filled
the void left by our greatest non-working director, and now there
is In the Company of Men, a controversial and disturbingly
bleak new black comedy. The first film by writer-director Neil
LaBute, Company has been both exalted as a brilliant satire
and scorned as a shallow burp of white male indigestion posing
as satire. It's probably a little of both. But that very uncertainty
is what makes it such an uneasy and unforgettable experience.
Working with a $25,000 budget (shades of Clerks
-- this movie could be called Jerks) and stark, spartan
sets, LaBute keeps his camera locked down as his two protagonists,
Chad (Aaron Eckhart) and Howard (Matt Malloy), discuss the perfidies
of women. Woman -- that most untrustworthy and enraging
creature! Listening to these two, we realize that some of their
specific complaints would sound inoffensive if they were women
talking about these same flaws in men. But these two, and Chad
in particular, go a step further. They're bewildered; they can't
believe they're living in a world in which the rules keep changing
and men can't even pretend to be men any more. Chad talks about
women as if they were a virus spreading and infecting everything.
LaBute never stands outside the sensibilities of these men, never
tells us that of course he understands that they're sexist
pigs. (For this reason, the film should infuriate the literal-minded.)
Chad, a rancid corporate slickster, and Howard, a schlumpy doormat,
decide to get revenge for the pain that women have caused them.
Their plan is to single out a woman -- preferably lonely and
grateful for any male attention -- and court her simultaneously
and separately, then dump her and gloat over the psychic damage
they've wrought. Chad stumbles onto the perfect target: Christine
(Stacy Edwards), a shy, beautiful secretary who also happens
to be completely deaf.
In the Company of Men is a static and hermetic exercise;
the head games in the boardroom and bedroom are intended as a
microcosm for the callous corporate ethos that has coarsened
us all. The form is farcical -- critics have likened it to Restoration
comedy and to Les Liaisons Dangereuses in particular --
yet the tone is realistic, and the actors give performances to
match. Eckhart smoothly embodies every frat boy turned office
wolf; Malloy's portrait of a spiritually squashed and pathetic
man becomes almost too painful to watch. And Edwards, in an enchanting
and utterly convincing turn (she isn't deaf in real life), makes
us feel what this war between the sexes is costing the other
side.
Is it a great movie? It falls just short, I think. LaBute, like
Jules Feiffer in his nasty men-women satire Carnal
Knowledge, goes too far in hollowing out the men. They are
nothing but resentment and manipulation, which sometimes
leaves a dramatic void. So it's hard to be involved in their
game on a basic human level. We watch from a distance. A great
satire, like the master's A Clockwork Orange, would seduce
us into complicity with evil. LaBute's film isn't nasty enough.
Still, this is an energizing and indelible debut. And it ends
on an appropriately sour note; the silence of the final shot
may echo in your mind for days afterward. |