By Luke Buckmaster on Nov 10, 2008
Pull up a chair. Relax. Sit down. Take a deep breath. There is no agenda, no plan, no curriculum, no rules. There are no guarantees, no promise of a better tomorrow. But we’ll talk. This is what the troubled characters in writer/director Michael Joy’s exemplary drama Men’s Group are presented with: hope through conversation.
The premise is as basic as they come: a group of six men with ambiguous emotional issues meet once a week. From this simplistic setup Joy triggers a series of deep encounters, using lounge chair conversation to springboard discussions ultimately aimed at exploring what it takes to be a man, in the context of lives spent struggling, failing, searching, overcoming and trying again. The group’s mediator is Paul (Paul Gleeson) and the meetings take place in his lounge room. During their first encounter the six men are complete strangers. There is Freddy (Steve Roders), a shonky stand-up comedian ravaged by a bitter divorce; the lonely and quick-tempered Moses (Paul Tassone); Cecil (Don Reid), an quaint elderly widower; Alex (Grant Dodwell), a volatile chatterbox struggling to connect with his family; and Lucas (Steve Le Marquand), who is stubbornly withdrawn and secretive. The warm and tolerant Paul announces at their first session that “there are no immediate solutions to anyone’s problems…all we are doing here is just talking.”
Pull up a chair. Relax. Sit down. Take a deep breath. There is no agenda, no plan, no curriculum, no rules. There are no guarantees, no promise of a better tomorrow. But we’ll talk. This is what the troubled characters in writer/director Michael Joy’s exemplary drama Men’s Group are presented with: hope through conversation.
The premise is as basic as they come: a group of six men with ambiguous emotional issues meet once a week. From this simplistic setup Joy triggers a series of deep encounters, using lounge chair conversation to springboard discussions ultimately aimed at exploring what it takes to be a man, in the context of lives spent struggling, failing, searching, overcoming and trying again. The group’s mediator is Paul (Paul Gleeson) and the meetings take place in his lounge room. During their first encounter the six men are complete strangers. There is Freddy (Steve Roders), a shonky stand-up comedian ravaged by a bitter divorce; the lonely and quick-tempered Moses (Paul Tassone); Cecil (Don Reid), an quaint elderly widower; Alex (Grant Dodwell), a volatile chatterbox struggling to connect with his family; and Lucas (Steve Le Marquand), who is stubbornly withdrawn and secretive. The warm and tolerant Paul announces at their first session that “there are no immediate solutions to anyone’s problems…all we are doing here is just talking.”
Between slabs of conversation we follow short snippets of the characters lives, which gradually fill in the gaps and form a rounded but nonetheless incomplete picture. Joy’s screenplay, co-written by producer John L. Simpson, skilfully peels away layers of the characters’ padded inner selves, steering well clear of clichés and rarely taking the easy way out. Nobody switches from an introvert to extrovert at the convenience of the plot, and the unravelling of the group’s personalities doesn’t follow the rhythms of conventional narrative, so there are plenty of ambiguities by the time the final credits roll. A great deal of interest is summoned not from what is said but what has been left unarticulated.
The characters feel real and genuine in the best theatrical sense: they’re interesting people, believable people, people with challenging secrets. We’re compelled to watch them and figure out their stories. Joy succeeds marvellously in capturing the group’s dynamic – sometimes harmonious, often volatile, and always seeming like it could go either way. Only once does the film dip into obvious imagery, during a scene in which the characters wear face paint masks that represent facets of their psyches (the widower, for example, has a big red heart painted on him).The simple craft of conversation is paramount to Men’s Group. Crucially, Joy’s dialogue is fluid, naturalistic and engaging, and, interspersed with heartfelt monologues, words really carry the film. The structure is a lot like a play, so those who are wary of films with verbose scripts should probably steer clear. Everybody else should pull up a chair.
Producer John L. Simpson’s previous feature was The Jammed (2007), a gut-blasting film about sex slaves in Melbourne. It features a formidable ensemble of high-voltage performances from young women. This time around it’s the boys club – there are precious few glimpses of women in Men’s Group, let alone any female characters - and again Simpson’s cast is top-notch; the actors take their poignantly rendered characters to at times emotionally explosive depths. Forget lush settings or moody lighting – all this happens amid the humble surrounds of a lounge room, the physical anchor for the film’s unerring sense of humility and openness.
Cinematographer Geoffrey Wharton’s unconventionally framed handheld cameras add a bleary sense of realism. In one tremendous scene, which depicts the long-time-coming breakdown of a hard-headed and contumacious character, the camera hovers around another member of the group, observing his staid reaction, and seemingly reluctant - or afraid - to confront the tumultuous performance unfolding inches away. You wouldn’t blame the person filming if he or she simply couldn’t bear to turn around and face the music; the performances in Men’s Group feel that genuine. Combined with the film’s quasi fly-on-the-wall production values, it feels at times like you’re in Paul’s lounge room with them, fidgeting on the couch, nervously anticipating a turn to speak.
Michael Joy and his heartrending cast have made a profound film without a trace of pretension. Devastatingly emotional but warm and compassionate, with soft rays of optimism lighting dark and gloomy places, providing a neat balancing act between torment and optimism, Men’s Group achieves a great deal without straying far from simple things: coasters, armchairs, coffee tables. It is in the same family as talky films like The Breakfast Club, which rely on words and conversation to lend commonplace settings far-reaching significance. The elements come together commendably in this modest but exquisitely moving film.
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