The thriller Manodrome shows misogynists as harmless jerks in cozy sweaters

Fight Club from 1999 is not the first, but probably the best-known film to deal intensively with a societal crisis of masculinity grapples. David Fincher’s masterpiece shows how people break their own expectations and those of others and find the supposed solution in something that ultimately doesn’t help anyone: violence and destruction.

Almost a quarter of a century later, Manodrome celebrates its world premiere at the Berlinale. Director/writer John Trengove’s thriller also follows a frustrated man who is radicalized by a godlike mentor. Uber driver Ralphie joins a women-hating men’s organizationto unleash his “extinguishing”, naturally deeply masculine power.

Sounds like Fight Club 2.0 and this at a time when violent men’s rights groups are being discussed far beyond Internet forums – or? Unfortunately not. Because Manodrome seems to have no idea what’s really interesting about its story.

The opposite of Fight Club: The thriller downplays the danger of misogynistic groups

Before I delve deeper into this film, we need to get one thing straight here: The really interesting thing, the supposed core of this story, is a men’s rights group. Led by Dad Dan (Adrien Brody), men of different ages live together in a country house somewhere in upstate New York. you live celibate, consciously abstain from sexand avoid contact with women.

Instead, they cook together, collect firewood, sleep in bunk beds, celebrate Christmas in cozy sweaters and talk about their feelings. Sometimes someone cries or freaks out and everyone hugs them. When new people join the group, they get Tattoos that look a bit like the Deathly Hallows symbol from Harry Potter. Above all, they seem impressively harmless compared to the increasingly aggressive Ralphie (Jesse Eisenberg).

This is of course a problem. Because behind the cozy men’s evening aesthetic is a clearly misogynistic worldview, which the film only scratches. The members of the Manodrome are not incels, as they deliberately do not have sex. The real-life equivalent of the fictional group is more like the “Men Going Their Own Way” movement, who wants to get out of the supposedly female-dominated society and sees herself as the superior part of the species. Women, on the other hand, are privileged, think they are better and oppress men. “pussies”as the film puts it in one scene.

Violence in this worldview is not an annoying outlier of people like Ralphie overshooting the mark. It is elementary feature of the so-called manosphere, from incels to pick-up artists. Why Manodrome doesn’t delve deeper into the movement the film is named after remains completely unclear. What does such a community do all day? Are there planned campaigns and deliberate recruitment attempts? How is Dad Dan funded and what about similar groups in the rest of the US that will be briefly referenced? will here, similar to Fight Club, working towards a coup? We don’t find out.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s Jesse Eisenberg or Adrien Brody: characters and story are too one-dimensional to be exciting

Instead, the film stays close to Eisenberg’s character, Ralphie. Which is a shame, because it’s neither narrative nor visually particularly exciting. Ralphie is either training hard in a gloomy gymnasium or sitting in his car in a bad mood, driving people from A to B and ignoring calls from his heavily pregnant girlfriend Sal (Odessa Young). Sometimes he shoots at people toooften surprising.

Manodrome in good: See the Fight Club trailer here

Then the audience flinches, maybe even feeling something like tension for a brief moment. But Manodrome has neither time nor interest in the characters who murder or are murdered. At least not right.

Each is exactly what it is shown to be at first glance. Dad Dan, the only superficially charismatic middle-aged guy who would rather found a celibate male sect, than to help his ex-wives around the house. Sal, the “annoying” friend who’s only there so that we, as viewers, understand when Ralphie is meant to be warm and when to be emotionally distant. And Ralphie, the very insecure guy at heart, he turns his daddy issues against everythingwhich challenges his self-imposed image of “masculinity”.

The story in one sentence? Young man becomes increasingly violent until the right person hugs him. That’s it. A pity. I would have loved to have liked this film with its socially relevant hook.

Manodrome drowns its vast potential in blood, violence and ringtones

There’s a scene at the beginning of Manodrome where Ralphie is standing in front of the mirror in the locker room of his gym basement, flexing muscles and taking a selfie. Something wet glitters on his cheek. It could be sweat, or a tear. The supposed triumph over one’s own body and the pain of one’s own existence cannot be distinguished at this moment. What does that do to him? How does that feel?

For anger and if so, at whom exactly? After helplessness and if so, towards what? Show me that, but right. With words. Dealing with other characters that don’t just feel like cardboard cutouts with text. With inner turmoil that is more than one Plot Device to prepare the next shock moment. Through a real immersion in the “Manodrome”.

Fight Club’s violence was everything, but never empty. Manodrome tears open his chest with visible effort to reveal the heart of helpless manhood – but there’s nothing there. In that one shot in front of the mirror lies everything worth exploring in Manodrome. Instead we get a cross between Fight Club and Taxi Driver with no brain, heart or soul.

Manodrome will be shown in selected cinemas as part of the Berlinale 2023. So far there has not been a Germany-wide theatrical release.

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