Get your own Free Home Page
Directed by Neil LaBute
Written by Neil LaBute
Starring Aaron Eckhart, Matt Malloy, Stacy Edwards, Emily Cline
USA, 1997
Rated R (language and emotional abuse)
DOG EAT DOG
In the Company of Men is horrific. It takes place in the cutthroat corporate world, a setting not so alien to movies. We are introduced to Chad (Aaron Eckhart), a singularly vile and grossly confident junior executive, and his less assured friend and boss, Howard (Matt Malloy). Both have been recently dumped by their long-time girlfriends, and Chad, in an attempt to soothe his bruised ego, proposes a most sinister plan: while on a six-week business project at a company branch, the two will find a sad, vulnerable woman, woo her, make her feel loved, then dump her just as she sees her romantic dreams coming true. Howard is both appalled and excited by the plot, which Chad believes will restore their masculine dignity, and the weaker man gives in to the stronger one’s poisonous persuasion.
This, Neil LaBute’s acclaimed film debut, is a stark derision of yuppie capitalism, and the very first thing that struck me in this black, black comedy was how stylistically stark it is. LaBute has said that the film has a five-act structure. He was a playwright before hitting it big at Sundance with this hit that he made for $25,000, and the film is structured very much like a play. Its style is rooted in theater. The film is devoid of a score except for pounding percussive beats during the credits and the titles that divide the film into seven segments. Joel Plotch’s immaculate editing, more often than not, uses cuts instead of dissolves or fades and the scenes are predominantly done in one shot, so they feel distinct and separate. The sets are not elaborate, and the story is communicated to us mostly through dialogue. The flawless cinematography by Tony Hettinger utilizes a few bold colors to create a sharp, plastic, industrial look. We get a delightfully disturbing feeling of artificiality, as if Hettinger were filming dolls in dollhouses.
With this brilliant structure, LaBute creates quite an exceptional film out of what becomes a rather predictable plot (save for a fascinating twist at the end). Once we learn that the two men are going to carry out their scheme, there’s nothing left for the audience to do but be witnesses to an emotional rape. Anyone can easily guess that one of the men will fall in love with the victim, an attractive deaf secretary named Christine (Stacy Edwards, who is not deaf, is completely convincing).
What makes the film riveting is how brutally blunt the character Chad is. Aaron Eckhart is very good, with his Nazi-villainy-meets-sleek-charisma formula. Chad is without a conscience, has no redeeming qualities, and is utterly monstrous in a darkly sexual way, and Eckhart plays him with diabolical frigidity. LaBute’s characters can each be summed up in one phrase. They are what they are and stay that way throughout the film, and Chad’s evil, Howard’s timidity, and Christine’s sensitivity are all trite, and affective that way. And, of course, Chad is the evil character because the sexy guys are always the dangerous ones, and the short men with glasses, like Howard, are always the ignorant followers. Chad is an unbelievable character because he is only characterized by his scheme, and the scheme is unbelievable. There are slight allusions to Chad beginning to feel for Christine, but they are rare and masterfully downplayed by Eckhart. His performance is at its most showy and successful when it and the writing are most cartoonish, like when Chad cracks malicious jokes about Christine’s speech, comparing it to Flipper and the Elephant Man. Matt Malloy’s performance has poignant desperation, but is less stunning than Eckhart’s because his character is less caricatured.
In the Company of Men is depressing and cynical, and the cynicism, like the characters, is affectively banal, though sometimes inevitably hollow. The film is saying that power corrupts, and that some men are so empty that only cruelty can bring them pleasure; it’s one of the oldest stories in the book. In the Company of Men is not about the battle between the sexes, but the battles within the sexes, particularly the male gender. Chad’s underlying bitterness toward Howard, who is in charge at the company branch, is dealt with by applying that bitterness to the opposite sex. His scheme is about paranoia over power; he intentionally and suavely destroys the man above him in a roundabout way, by destroying a woman Howard loves and putting the guilt on him. Chad’s cruelty is portrayed as primal-masculine-yuppie evil; several of the two men’s conversations about Christine and their “game” occur in the bathroom. Underneath the glossily photographed surface of In the Company of Men is a seedy world where true power is sexual power (one horrifying scene has Chad forcing a black worker to show him his balls). The film basically depicts the capitalist as a breed of rapist and cannibal.
By Andrew Chan [SEPT. 22, 2000]
Get your own Free Home Page