No Men Beyond This Point
Directed by: Mark Sawers.
Written by: Mark Sawers.
Starring: Patrick Gilmore (Andrew
Myers), Kristine Cofsky (Iris Balashev), Morgan Taylor Campbell (Dahlia
Granger), Dakota Guppy (Ruby Balashev), Jill Morrison (Linnea Ruben), Tom
McBeath (Jim), Malcolm Stewart (Senator Fitch), Mary Black (Helen Duvall), Ken
Kramer (Gordon Trescott), Cameron McDonald (Darius Smith).
What
would 2015 look like if, starting in the 1950s, women simply starting getting
pregnant spontaneously – and within a few years that was the only way that they
could get pregnant, and all the new children being born were girls? That is the
premise of the mockumentary No Men Beyond This Point – and it’s a good premise.
Unfortunately, the execution of the movie is not up to the premise – as the
film takes the most obvious path imaginable, trading in stereotypes of both
genders, and going for easy laugh line rather than actually explore its
premise. I get it – the movie is a comedy, and isn’t make to be taken
seriously, but the more I think about the film, the lazier it seems. If you’re
going to take this as your jumping off, then I think you have to have more
courage to actually explore it, and this movie doesn’t really do that.
The
focus of the movie is basically on Andrew Myers (Patrick Gilmore), now
somewhere in his 30s, and the youngest man on the planet. Most of the men still
alive have gone to live in sanctuaries, where they are given a comfortable
place to live out their days, away from female kind. The men that remain in
society are treated as second class citizens, and are basically used for
domestic labor. Patrick works for a couple of women, raising their children
together. No, they are not lesbians, because bizarrely in this world, the
ruling class of women are pretty much trying to ban all sexuality of any kind.
They have also done away with the old school religions, and replaced it with
some sort of nature based one. Oh, and women saw no point in putting a man on the
moon, creating the internet or developing video games past Pong. And, of
course, there is world peace. There are still idiotic Men’s Rights Activists,
who want to see their gender restored to their “rightful place” as the dominant
sex, but they are mainly placated at the sanctuaries with tenderloin. The women
in charge – and seemingly pretty all much women – don’t seem to care too much
that men are dying out. It was an act of nature, after all, and you cannot
question nature.
No
Men Beyond This Point is a movie that basically gets its view of the two
genders from generic TV sitcoms, and that’s basically the level of the quality
of the movie as well. It’s an occasionally amusing, not too painful movie to
sit through – with a few decent lines and moments – but one that is also bland
and forgettable. I wish the film had pushed itself harder – to really examine
the alternate world in which it is suggesting – that afterall is what the
effective “alternative” future/present works do – like Philip Roth’s The Plot
Against America or Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle for example.
Those novels created a world in which you can actually imagine exisiting. And
that is where No Men Beyond This Point basically fails for me – that I could
never see this world existing, even if you buy the basic premise of the movie.
It is rather insultingly simplistic to both men and women, as it paints both
genders as homogenous and unvarying, and doesn’t do anything to question the
oldest stereotypes of both genders. There is a good movie to be made of the
premise of No Men Beyond This Point – one that doesn’t just put a lot of
stereotypes on screen. Maybe we’ll get that movie one day – but this one isn’t
it.
Note:
The
film opens at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. I saw it at TIFF last year,
and I assume it’s the same version I saw there.
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