Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

I don’t usually do the movie reviews here, and I realize I saw this movie well out of timeliness, but I needed to express how repulsive I found it. I realize that the repulsiveness was kind of the point, but in order for me to accept that this was a movie about hideous men and not a hideous movie about men, I think the structure needed to be quite different. I haven’t read the book, nor have I read anything by David Foster Wallace, so I only have its Wikipedia entry as a vantage point for understanding how the movie could go so horribly wrong. It seems that trying to make the individual stories easier to absorb by intertwining them in a  flimsy story line made the whole movie a monumental failure. The weak plot and token interviewer character seemed to support the interviewees’ thoughts and stories rather than contrast them in a way that seemed to me to be overtly hostile.

The reason I watched this movie was to see what John Krasinski could do as a writer/director. Despite my liking him in his role as Jim on The Office, and really trying to enjoy something about this movie, I finally determined it to be irredeemable. From previews I was less than interested, though I seemed to get the impression that this was going to be a sort of dry comedy. At some points it seemed like there was supposed to be a little dark humor or a sort of irony, but it was unclear because of the overall erratic mood and tone. It seemed like that impression was the effect of having such broad topics condensed in movie format. As a character study exemplifying examples of sexism and racism, it was fairly effective but could have used more varied vocal points of view. I’m a pretty hard person to offend, yet the way the interviews were assembled and delivered was often deeply offensive to me. I’m not sure if the original collection of stories was meant purely for self-aware shock value but in the movie they came off that way. If that was Krasinski’s intent and interpretation of the original, then I suppose he did a good job.

The scenes were often well composed and beautiful, but came off as a jumbled mess, with the interview answer monologues being delivered in many varied ways. Some were men in a grey room talking, some were part of the interviewer’s life, and others were apparently overheard by her on the sly. The ones I felt held up best were those where the story was told as it unfolded around the speaker in the listener's imagination. I might have liked the movie better if all of the stories were set up that way and the interviewer remained anonymous. It seemed like that took too much of the budget and could only be used for some of the scenes. Regardless of the format, the interviews were split up and scattered throughout the movie out of order, which was another rare touch that I actually liked. It kept me from getting furious all at once and instead let my loathing grow over the course of the movie as I slowly realized the only place the plot was going was up its own figurative ass.

I could easily say that I hated this movie with every fiber of my being for the just over an hour that it existed in my life. And man did that hour last, I felt like the movie would never end. It was rambling, random, and thematically jumpy as hell. For the first roughly half I followed along, but around the middle the narrative just lost me.  My fellow viewers seemed attentive enough, enthralled with its faux deepness and pseudo-philosophy. Out of the group of people watching, I was one of the few that really seemed to dislike the movie. It just seemed like this movie was trying harder to shove the fact that it was intelligent down my throat than to entertain or enlighten me. The last movie I disliked so much for that reason was Smart People.

I assumed that since the stories were strung together by even a weak central element that there would be some sort of conclusion that never came. Even though redemption was a theme, there was no redemptive feature; no moral point of reference. That added to my finding this offensive on so many different levels. It was just hostile to people; sexist against men and women and even a bit racist (even if the Death Cab for Cutie guy points it out). The choice to make the interviewer a recently cheated on woman writing a thesis on relationships based on interviews of men about their thoughts on life, relationships, and the effect of feminism set up a movie full of misogynism. On the other hand, the interviewees and acquaintances being representative of men was equally misandrist. There might not have been a redeemable interviewee, but an acknowledgment that their views aren’t acceptable or typical would have added a little more depth. Even on Family Guy, other characters express embarrassment at Peter and Quagmire. The bland interviewee just stares, and only on a rare occasion expresses her disgust. The movie would have been fine as a collection of vaguely thematically related monologues if the person doing the interviewing wasn’t directly involved in the semblance of a plot. Or if her character had any depth beyond being an empty caricature of a cold and detached feminist. Throughout various interviews the men express what they think women want while persistently objectifying and generalizing them. Meanwhile, the one main female character is likewise treated as an object and barely developed or given any notable features. It made me wonder why she was even brought out of anonymity at all if a decent character couldn’t be made of her in order to bring some perspective into the collected interviews.

Highest on the list of offensive moments for me were the rape as redemption stories. I tried to see where they were going since I assumed the viewers, like the interviewer, were asked to avoid knee jerk reactions. In both cases I found that their arguments fell flat even after rational analysis. They both were based on the idea that someone can only grow and flourish if they have something truly terrible happen to them, and suggested that one couldn’t be complete without such an experience. The first instance was a character generalizing personal experiences for all survivors of rape in a school assignment. The other was another character retelling someone else’s ‘anecdote’ as their own source of inspiration and also, inexplicably, a way to seek pardon for their cheating on the interviewer. If that doesn’t make sense after reading it, then it was about the same as watching it. If a horrifying thing happens to someone, even the chance that they might grow stronger from it does not excuse the fact that it was horrifying. I can see where these stories could be inspirational but in the context of the scenes, all I saw was weak justification and I found it disgusting. Perhaps better care to point out that these views were unique to the characters, or better acting, or having the second character tell her own story could have prevented that impression. Otherwise, I had better go get shot or something so that I can be a complete person.

The ending of the movie didn’t resolve much besides revealing the interviewer’s fairly obvious motivation and purpose. I know it was left open ended for individual interpretation, but the shifting focus and tone made it difficult to find any meaning beyond misanthropy. Which leads me to believe the point was to highlight the worst of humanity. It’s interesting that now I’m actually planning on reading some of David Foster Wallace’s work just to see what genius could have inspired such noble folly. Maybe I can find some of that humor and irony that seemed like it wanted to come out in the movie. Then again I think reading things myself is always better than trying to watch someone elses' interpretations.