PROFOUNDLY SIMPLE AND REAL

Reviewed by Jax Standish

To call a film honest, heart-warming, funny, devastating and gripping might well sound like a host of clichés, but here they are not spoken lightly. Men’s Group is one of those stories that seeps in; I find myself reflecting frequently on the lives of Alex, Cecil, Moses, Freddy and Lucas, the men who have been called or pushed to attend a weekly men’s group in the home of their facilitator, Paul. From the opening scene of the film, you can tell it’s going to be a good one. There’s that ‘no-frills’ feel, with a shaky camera and raw lighting, that can only be described as quintessentially Australian. This is a courageous film, an inspiring film, a deeply necessary film. Men’s Group is the film Australia had to have.

From early on, I could guess how the narrative would play out. You know how it goes, put six Aussie blokes together in a group and expect them to ‘connect’? There’ll be inevitable resistance that is slowly worn down. One by one, the men will expose something vulnerable or secret about themselves; by the end, after the climax of some kind of tragedy, they’ll have grown into better human beings. But for all the accuracy of this hypothesis, there was no sense of boredom or predictability. The sheer quality of the performances and scriptwriting encouraged a sense of anticipation at what would be revealed, when and by whom. Watching the narrative unfold was both frustrating and captivating, asking the audience to leap into understanding on the one hand and elongate the pleasure of viewing on the other.

The six men are so different in energy and character, yet somehow so incredibly male in their constraint and, beneath that, in their secret palpable desire to be seen, to be heard, to be met. I would defy anyone to watch Men’s Group and not find something of the men in their own life revealed. Career, money and prestige feature little in what they share. The stories of love, relationships, children and families—typically seen as female territory—draw the men together. “If there’s an area where all of us seem to have a commonality, it’s to do with fatherhood, either being a father or having had a father. This is where most of the shit is for blokes,” Cecil (Don Reid) observes.

Paul’s (Paul Gleeson) lounge-room is the film’s primary setting, but between each 'meeting', a short montage captures the movements of each character as they go about the intervening days. The myriad landscapes of Sydney—the natural, the urban, the gritty, unsightly and beautiful—are as varied and richly depicted as the men themselves. These interludes subtly draw the viewer in, and the smallest gesture, the way one man pours a glass of orange juice or another fries an egg, evokes so much. The friends and family of the men are always experienced on the periphery, on the other end of a phone, through a glass door, in profile. This really is the men’s story, a journey into their private shared world, where other people impact but never take centre stage.

Men’s Group spoon-feeds nothing to the viewer. Much is left unsaid, a lot left unseen, but alluded to only by a word, a gesture, an unanswered question. And there is a relief to be found in this, a conclusion in which a journey surely has taken place and progress made, but the final package is not neatly wrapped and tied with a pretty ribbon. The viewer can sense there is still unpacking that needs to be done, that will be done.

I must confess I didn’t pay much attention to the soundtrack, the cinematography and other technical aspects of the film. I was too gripped by the story to bother noticing. But I take this as proof of their quality, that the practitioners of each aspect were doing their job unobtrusively and allowing the actors the stage. There are no unnecessary artistic flairs here, just the solid filmmaking of the most profoundly simple and REAL movie I have seen in a long time.

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