Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Elijah Bynum
Starring: Jonathan Majors, Haley Bennett, Taylour Paige, Harrison Page, Harriet
Sansom Harris, Mike O'Hearn
If you thought
Joker
owed a lot to Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, you ain't seen nothing yet. Writer/director Eljah Bynum's
Magazine Dreams is so indebted to those Scorsese movies (along
with a couple of other obvious influences) that it makes Todd Phillips' film
seem like a work of staggering originality by comparison. But for all its
nods and homages, Magazine Dreams is a movie that keeps us
engaged thanks to a fascinating central performance and a narrative that
plays like a slow motion car crash from which we simply can't look away.
Bynum has taken the classic Paul Schrader "God's lonely man" template and
given it a twist by applying it not to the usual embittered middle class
white man but to a hulking African-American bodybuilder. Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) is a twenty-something man-child man-mountain who lives with his sickly
grandfather, works part-time at a grocery store and devotes every other
minute of his life to honing his physique through a combination of intense
physical exercise and steroid abuse, the latter of which has taken its toll
on both his body and his mind.
Like Joker did with its title character,
Magazine Dreams is quick to condemn America's notoriously
failed mental health system, opening with a post-hospitalised Killian being
interrogated by a well-meaning but ultimately useless counsellor (Harriet Sansom Harris). From the evidence of his behaviour she quotes and his reluctance to
engage, it's clear Killian is in no fit mental state to play an active role
in society, but he's cast into the wind regardless.
Taking its cues from King of Comedy, Magazine Dreams sees Killian live a Rupert Pupkin-esque
fantasy life, repeatedly writing needy letters to his idol, top competitive
bodybuilder Brad Vanderhorn (Mike O'Hearn), each unanswered letter
growing more passive aggressive in tone. He records a show on bodybuilding
tips in his grandfather's basement, but unlike Pupkin, who only had lifeless
mannequins for an audience, Killian is subjected to instant ridicule in the
form of YouTube comments.
Just as Killian increasingly inflicts damage on his body, so too does the
film spend two hours physically battering and emotionally bruising its
protagonist. Episodic in structure, Magazine Dreams is a
series of scenes in which Killian takes either a literal or metaphorical
beating. Each encounter he has with the human world he longs to be a part of
is more difficult to watch than the last. Killian is Frankenstein's Monster,
and the rest of the world is the little girl he drowns because he doesn't
know how to play.
Some scenes are recognisably derivative, like the Travis Bickle-esque
Killian's failed dinner date with a naive co-worker (Haley Bennet), a
disastrous audition straight out of Damien Chazelle's
Whiplash, and various meltdowns that recall Adam Sandler in Paul Thomas Anderson's
Punch Drunk Love, albeit played very much straight here. But what makes
Magazine Dreams stand on its own is its reworking of well-worn
tropes onto a black male protagonist. Early on, when Killian takes his place
on stage at a bodybuilding tournament alongside other musclebound black men,
it's impossible not to feel like you're watching an antebellum slave
auction, as every exposed ebony muscle is evaluated by a group of mostly
white judges. In its own crude way, Bynum's film has something to say about
America's hypocritical relationship to black male physicality. Killian's
impressive physique is both admired and feared, drawing applause at
bodybuilding events while causing white women to clutch their handbags more
tightly in his presence.
The unfortunate elephant in the room is now Majors, given his repulsive
offscreen behaviour, which led to the movie being shelved for two years. But
Majors is undoubtedly the film's greatest asset. His is a performance that
veers between making us nauseous to earning our sympathy, often in the space
of a single scene. Killian is the sort of man we try our best to avoid, a
walking human timebomb, and we witness him do some terrible things here.
Majors doesn't make Killian likeable (and perhaps the actor's offscreen
baggage contributes to this), but we always feel sorry for him as a man cast
aside by an uncaring system. In this way, Magazine Dreams does
a far better job of holding society accountable for the monsters its creates
than Joker.
Magazine Dreams is in US/Canadian
cinemas from March 21st. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
