Alex Garland explains why he changed the ending of Men

Alex Garland’s Men — his horror-movie follow-up to Annihilation And Ex Machina — ends without any cut-and-dried resolution. It’s unclear from the movie’s final moments exactly how the conflict resolved, or how real any of the action was. The movie is packed with Biblical and pagan symbolism, but scholars have long debated the historical meaning of the two primary icons Garland uses here, and Garland himself doesn’t offer any answers. Men is a heavily metaphorical movie that uses striking, provocative images for emotional impact, but it doesn’t lend itself to simple or definitive readings.

And Garland suggests that it wouldn’t matter if it did. He believes that viewers will still be able to interpret the film based on their experiences and biases, even if his agenda is more explicit.

“Many, many times, I’ve encountered people who say, ‘This film is clearly this,’” Garland tells Polygon. “And what they really mean is, ‘It’s clearly this To me.’ It’s about them, as well as the film. It’s about how they respond to it. It’s about their life history, it’s about their concerns about the world and their interaction with it.”

Kevin Baker/A24

Garland reflects on the start of his career and his novel The BeachThe film was directed by Danny Boyle and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as well as Tilda Swinton. DiCaprio portrays a tourist who is interested in novelty. He follows a trail to an island where tourists are trying to protect their beautiful beaches.

Garland said that the article was intended to critique the backpacker scene. “And I very quickly became aware that some people were reading it as Celebratory of the backpacker scene,” he says. “I’ve encountered that again and again and again. I’ve had people telling me, ‘Ex MachinaIt is approximately This, and you’re saying That.’ And I’m thinking ‘No, that’s Please enter your email addressIt is as simple as that. This is. YouCreative response Ex Machina, and that’s fine.’”

It is possible to Men goes, Garland says he’s avoided revealing anything about his own intentions or interpretations. At a Q&A after the New York City premiere of Men, he told the audience, “It’s not just shit happening. I’ve got a rationale, but it doesn’t seem to be terribly important.”

That feeling that his read on the ending wasn’t important was what led him to cut a short final scene that might have cleared up at least some of the ambiguity. He says the scene was actually shot. However, during editing, he realized that it worked for him better without explanations.

[Ed. note: Full spoilers ahead for the ending of Men.]

Kevin Baker/A24

In the film, a woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley) retreats to a country estate in England after her husband’s death. Harper was going to divorce James (Paapa Esiedu). He hits Harper, then yells at Harper. The resulting argument ends with him falling off a balcony to his death, though it’s unclear both to Harper and to the audience whether he deliberately jumped or accidentally fell while trying to break in on Harper after she locks him out.

Harper encounters a group of men and one teenage boy on the rental house. All have Rory Kinnear as their faces. They all want to get something from Harper, but they respond with different degrees of anger, contempt or condescension. In a scene that begins as an invasion horror film, but turns into something much more sinister and terrifying for the women involved, several men eventually confront her. Each subsequent man she hurts shows the same horrific wound as James’s fall. When one of the men catches her, she gives birth immediately to another man-monster. This creates a series of bloody and dripping bodily expulsions.

James is finally born by the last man-monster. Although he’s still in a state of dismemberment from the events that claimed his life, he seems to be now alive. Harper is clearly far too scared of these beasts to ask James his wishes. He replies that he still desires her love. Like much of the film, her response is unclear. Garland switches to a second scene in which Harper has a conversation with Riley. As the film closes, the women exchanging a silent smile.

Harper did this to James in a deliberate way? Do they leave Harper to him? Or did she just let him go as he was? They came to an arrangement? Did she just decide she wouldn’t let her life be defined by guilt over him, making what happens to him in the end irrelevant to her story? Was any of it real, or was it all a hallucination prompted by Harper’s grief and confusion? (The crashed car and the blood on Harper’s clothing suggests Something real happened, but doesn’t spell out what.)

Kevin Baker/A24

While Garland’s original final scene was short — he describes it as “four or five lines of dialogue between Harper and Riley” — it still might have made Harper’s state of mind and her interpretation of events a little clearer.

“In terms of what we shot, Jessie’s character looks up and smiles, and Riley walks over and they have a little dialogue exchange,” Garland tells Polygon. “I cut that dialogue exchange and came out of the film on the smile between them. Riley looks quizzical, and Harper smiles in reply, and is in a way pleased to see her.”

In that New York Q&A, Garland was a little more specific. “I’m always looking to cut dialogue,” he said. “I personally found it more touching when they just smiled at each other, because it’s been so dreadful, what preceded that moment. It’s as simple as a smile to each other. The dialogue felt redundant next to the smile.”

The director also explained to the viewers that the film’s purpose is to answer their questions. “I’m trying to lean into something which has to do with the way the audiences interpret, imaginatively engage, with images in the story,” he said. “I particularly wanted to step back, because there’s an element of it where the nature of the way it is interpreted by different people is actually what the film is. So I don’t want to intervene.”

He tells Polygon that since he wants people to come away with their own interpretations, he isn’t concerned with them misreading his. “I think it’s very likely that what you’ll get is some people whose opinions chime very closely with mine, and some people who chime very closely with other people who worked on the film, and some that are in a completely oppositional state,” he says.

In the end, he rejected the idea that the author of a work of art has any authority over its meaning. “I see that written again and again — ThisIt is all about the people. This, as if the writer is capable of having a definitive answer about the nature of something,” he says. “And I just dispute it. I dispute it in my interactions with people on anything, whether it’s a bacon sandwich or a book we both enjoyed or didn’t enjoy.”