The angry white man has a new Joker. His name is Ralphie (Jessie Eisenberg) and he’s mad as hell.
He’s also frightened. Vulnerable. Looking for a mission in life.
He finds it in the Manodrome (John Trengove, 2023).
The titular Manodrome is inspired by the men’s rights movement in the USA, which can broadly be described as the manosphere. In particular, the Men Going Their Own Way movement, which foreswears sexual intercourse with women as a means to fully realise your potential in life. Whatever happened to joining a monastery?
For people like Ralphie, addicted to the gains in a hyper-masculine gym and working a dead-end job as a rideshare driver, the appeal of the Manodrome is obvious. It gives him a way to redirect his wasted energy.
We first meet him working in his taxi. A woman in the back is breastfeeding her baby. He should be focussing on the road, but he is uncomfortably staring at her. Understandably, she asks to get out.
It’s an unsettling moment in a film chock-full of them, Ralphie unable to understand the normal social boundaries that make up civilisation. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Sal, sweetly played by Odessa Young, is sick and tired of smiling at her retail job. But while she is trying to make the most of it to provide for their upcoming baby, he is a man, and he’s not going to take it anymore. After hearing about it from a friend at the gym, he meets the Manodrome, headed by the charming, suave Don (Adrien Brody).
I won’t spoil much more, but his induction scenes perfectly illustrate the allure of men’s rights groups, especially during a time of financial scarcity. Like most Americans, Ralphie isn’t even jobless, but the money he makes doesn’t stretch enough to provide for his upcoming family. The Christmas setting, draping every scene in grey, drab colours, is perfect, especially considering how the materialism of the holidays can heighten pre-existing economic anxieties. Also, what would you do if Adrien Brody — with one of the great faces of cinema — stared directly at you and said:
“There is a staggering beauty in you. A cataclysmic power to create and annihilate.”
While many Hollywood films condition us to guess the twist a mile away, worthy Competition contender Manodrome — undergirded by a specific, tightly written screenplay — is filled with genuine shocks and surprises, fluidly shot and framed with a cinematography that never calls attention to itself but is certainly well-thought through. You might think that the men’s rights group would provide all the animating energy behind the film, but instead, it’s used as a springboard for Ralphie’s even-more outrageous behaviour, fluidly edited to immerse you into his tortured, nihilistic worldview.
It’s all held together by a breathtaking, career-best Eisenberg performance, sublimating his usual nervous energy into something far more unnerving. Rarely speaking throughout the film, motivations that might be underdeveloped in the hands of another actor, are given several, tantalising possibilities here.
Toxic masculinity is equally entertaining as it is haunting, taking us along for the ride as Ralphie slowly loses his tenuous grip on reality. Like watching the Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) beat up those finance bros or Travis Bickle in the final shootout in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), I found myself actively cheering him on.
Enjoying something does not mean you are endorsing it. Instead, it is a demonstration of how alluring breaking free of convention can be. It takes us back to the 70’s, when dense, hardcore, brutal character studies like this were a dime a dozen.
Alongside Tar (Todd Field, 2022), Manodrome raises hopes that the great capital-A American character study is back. I hope it gets similar critical attention.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.