Alex Garland explains why he changed the ending of Men

Alex Garlands men – its horror film sequel destruction and Ex Machina — ends without a final resolution. From the film’s final moments, it’s unclear how the conflict was resolved or how real the plot was. The film is packed with biblical and pagan symbolism, but scholars have long debated the historical significance of the two primary symbols Garland uses here, and Garland itself provides no answers. men is a heavily metaphorical film that uses striking, provocative imagery for emotional impact, but it does not lend itself to easy or definitive readings.

And Garland suggests it wouldn’t matter if it did. Even if he were far more blunt about spelling out an agenda in film, he believes viewers would still interpret it based on their own experiences and prejudices.

“Many, many times I’ve met people who say, ‘This movie is definitely that,'” Garland tells Polygon. “And what they really mean is, ‘It’s definitely this me.’ And in the end, it’s as much about her as it is about the film. It’s about their reaction to it. It’s about her life story, it’s about her concern for the world and how she deals with it.”

Garland points to the beginning of his career and his novel The beach, which director Danny Boyle eventually turned into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tilda Swinton. DiCaprio plays a novelty-hungry traveler who follows a rumor to a remote island, where a group of international travelers are trying to keep a beautiful beach to themselves, fearing tourism and popularity will ruin their paradise.

Garland says he intended the story to be critical of the backpacker scene. “And I realized very quickly that some people read it that way festive the backpacker scene,” he says. “I’ve encountered that again and again. I’ve had people tell me, ‘Ex Machina is about thisand you say the.’ And I’m like, ‘No, that’s it she says that. That is your imaginative answer to Ex Machinaand that’s fine.’”

As far as men Garland says he avoided revealing anything about his own intentions or interpretations. At a Q&A following the New York premiere of men, he told the audience, “It’s not just shit that happens. I have a reason, but it doesn’t seem particularly important.”

This feeling that his reading of the ending wasn’t important led him to cut a brief final scene that could have removed at least some of the ambiguity. The scene was shot, he says, but he decided during the editing process that the film worked better for him without explanations.

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

In the film, a woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley) retires to a country estate in England after the death of her husband. Harper intended to divorce James (Paapa Essiedu) and when she tells him he hits and yells at her. The resulting argument ends with him falling to his death from a balcony, although it is unclear to both Harper and the audience whether he jumped on purpose or accidentally fell while trying to break into Harper’s house after she locked him out would have.

At the rental, Harper meets a bunch of men (and a creepy teenager) who all have the face of Rory Kinnear. They all want something from her and meet her refusals with varying degrees of anger, contempt, or condescension. Eventually, some of the men confront her in a sequence that starts out as a home invasion horror film and morphs into something more like cosmic body horror. As she wounds one of the men, each subsequent one reveals the same horrific wound, mimicking the fatal damage James sustained in his fall. And when one of them corners her, he promptly gives birth to another human-monster, giving birth to another in a chain of bloody, dripping ejaculations.

Eventually, the last human monster gives birth to James, still broken and mangled from the event that killed him but seemingly alive. Harper, who wields an ax and has apparently not been afraid of these creatures for a long time, asks James what he wants from her and he says he still wants her love. Her answer, like so much in the film, is ambiguous. Garland then moves to a later moment where Harper is meeting up with an old friend, Riley, and the two women exchange wordless smiles at the end of the film.

Did Harper kill the new James on purpose this time? Did she leave him to his own devices and just walk away? Did they somehow agree? Had she just decided that she wasn’t going to let guilt about him rule her life, making what happens to him in the end irrelevant to her story? Was any of this real, or was it all a hallucination triggered by Harper’s grief and confusion? (The crashed car and the blood on Harper’s clothes suggest this some really happened but didn’t spell what.)

Although Garland’s original ending scene was brief – he describes it as “four or five lines of dialogue between Harper and Riley” – it might have made Harper’s state of mind and interpretation of events a little clearer.

“Regarding what we were shooting, Jessie’s character looks up and smiles, and Riley comes over and they have a little dialogue,” Garland tells Polygon. “I interrupted that dialogue and got out of the movie about the smiles between them. Riley looks questioning, and Harper smiles in response, sort of pleased to see her.”

In this New York Q&A, Garland was a bit more specific. “I always try to interrupt the dialogue,” he said. “I personally found it more touching when they just smiled at each other because what preceded that moment was so horrible. And all they have to do is smile at each other, and that felt stronger and easier. The dialogue felt redundant next to the smile.”

He also told the audience that their questions about what happens at the end is the core of the film. “I’m trying to engage with something that has to do with how the audience interprets images in the story, engages imaginatively with them,” he said. “I especially wanted to take a step back because there’s an element where how it’s interpreted by different people is actually what the film is. That’s why I don’t want to intervene.”

He tells Polygon that he doesn’t care if they misinterpret his as he wants people to have their own interpretations. “I think it’s very likely that you’re going to get some people whose opinions are very closely aligned with mine, and some people who are very closely aligned with other people who worked on the film, and some who feel in are in a completely opposite state.” he says.

And he ends up rejecting the idea that the creator of a work of art is any authority on what it even means. “I keep seeing that written – this the thing is this, as if the author were able to give a definitive answer as to the nature of something,” he says. “And I just deny it. I deny it over anything in my interactions with people, whether it’s a bacon sandwich or a book that we both enjoyed or didn’t enjoy.”