Anya Taylor-Joy has had quite the year. The New Mutants was finally released, in which she was easily the best thing, her turn of Emma earned her some award recognition, and then through chess prodigy Beth Harmon in Netflix mini-series The Queen’s Gambit, she secured a multitude of awards. Later this year she stars in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, and will be stepping in Charlize Theron’s shoes to play a younger version of Mad Max: Fury Road character Furiosa. Before all that though she can be found in Here are the Young Men.
Based on the novel by writer Rob Doyle and directed by Eoin Macken, Here are the Young Men follows three friends as they navigate life post-education across the summer of 2003. Matthew (Dean-Charles Chapman), Rez (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and Kearney (Finn Cole) find themselves adrift in a world of alcohol and drugs after finishing up with school. With the rules and regulations that have been imposed on them for so many years suddenly removed, the trio begin living their lives to the excess. After Matthew begins a relationship with their female friend, Jen (Anya Taylor-Joy), the group begins a one-way path to destruction. Can they, and their friendship survive this downward spiral into depravity?
The bulk of Here are the Young Men is spent with Matthew and Kearney. The third member of the group, Rez, gets little time and development; he ends up feeling like an inclusion just to beef up numbers and offer a buffer when the other two begin to unravel. It’s a shame as there is time in the narrative to explore the other character and offer a third, potentially more unbiased, perspective on events. Although technically an outside character, it is Taylor-Joy’s Jen that helps push the narrative forwards. Jen is your typical happy-go-lucky young woman, one with big dreams and aspirations, and one who is completely oblivious to the effect that she has on two-thirds of the trio. Both Matthew and Kearney have designs on her affections, and Jen’s choice of suitor causes a massive rift between the friends. It’s a love triangle story as old as time, but Doyle and Macken inject it with a very modern strand of malice. As these scenes unfold on screen, Here are the Young Men veers into unexpected dangerous territory, and creates some very difficult moments to watch. How this incident is dealt with creates further unease, and a little fury, as the viewer is kept dangling on a hook whilst they wait to see if, and how, things will be resolved.
The dynamic between Matthew and Kearney is eerily accurate. We’ve all seen, and potentially experienced, a toxic friendship and this is the perfect example of one. It’s hard to understand just quite how these two became friends in the first place, but highlights how easily you can miss something in those closest to us. Chapman and Cole play their parts wonderfully, Cole doing an especially unnerving job with Kearney’s sociopathic qualities. Chapman also plays the wide-eyed innocent note-perfect and the pair make for an interesting conflicting duo on screen. The relationship has echoes of many other fictional pairings, but personally it resonated some big Daniel Isn’t Real vibes. The difference here being that Kearney is an actual person and not a demonic entity parading as an imaginary friend. Macken’s background as an actor is apparent in his directing, he gives his young cast all the time they need to play out the intricacies of their roles. His desire to seek out this more unsettling source material also points to someone that wants to challenge his cast just as much as the audience at home watching.
Tonally Macken shifts between coming-of-age drama, humour, heartache and violence, within the blink of an eye. The mixture makes for strange bedfellows, but offer a great attempt at reflecting the way in which life itself is a forever changing thing. This blend of many things further works to provide a framework within which most viewers will find something to latch onto. Given where the film ends up, those with the stronger stomachs and darker tastes will inevitably have better time, but others won’t be entirely shut out. Stylistically Macken relies on the use of a lot of red lighting; entire scenes played out in red rooms, and a series of out of the world scenes. These sequences have a strange hallucination / vision / dream sequence quality to them. They feel akin to those featured in films such as Requiem for a Dream and Trainspotting, but whereas those films explain these moments as being fuelled by drugs, here the explanation is left unresolved. The viewer can interpret them however they choose too, but with no solid answer, these moments run the risk of derailing the movie for some.
A dangerously modern exploration of the toxicity of both masculinity and friendship, Here are the Young Men is a disturbing account of fragile egos and violence. Eoin Macken has thrown everything he can into making this movie; the result, a considered, but slightly uneven story, although one whose performances speak volumes.
Signature Entertainment presents Here are the Young Men on Digital 30th April and DVD 10th May 2021.
Here are the Young Men
Summary
Yet another project that benefits from Anya Taylor-Joy’s inclusion, Here are the Young Men is a performance-led, disturbing tale of both toxic masculinity and friendship.
