Some films sit at one tonal level throughout their entire runtime yet still take us on a multi-layered journey. Despite its flaws, director Elijah Bynum’s Magazine Dreams is one such film. In it, Jonathan Majors shines as Killian Maddox, an amateur bodybuilder who aspires to turn pro and wow the entire world. Killian is a stand-in for everything wrong with what our culture feeds men, but he’s also off-kilter enough as written and performed that the film loses this element of universality within the larger cultural conversation that it clearly wants to have.
In his thirties, Killian lives with his grandfather (Harrison Page), a situation which is a byproduct of trauma surrounding his parents. For much of its runtime, the film is unclear about what exactly happened to them, and so we’re left wondering as an audience about the particulars of Killian’s strange behavior as an adult. In my view, this isn’t a good kind of wondering, because the things Killian does outside of his bodybuilding life (and sometimes in that life as well) are so bizarre and self-harming that they’re simply difficult to watch. Majors is undoubtedly brilliant in the role, but after a while, the film loses its punch and becomes simply pummeling.
Killian has a self-hating complex about him; he borders on incel (“involuntary celibate,” a predominantly male online subculture based around misogyny and self-pity) behavior. At the grocery store where he works, he spits on people’s food when they’re not looking. He goes on perhaps the most awkward first date of all time with a co-worker. He vandalizes a store which he feels ripped off his grandfather. Part of his rage is created by the insane amount of steroids and other drugs he’s abusing. The entire film tracks a downward spiral which is authentically and grippingly portrayed, but again, because we don’t know much about Killian’s backstory, it’s hard not to feel like the film is just going through the motions of misery at several points. Like I said, there are many layers to it all, even without that backstory, but as good as so many elements of this film are, it lacks a crucial amount of connective tissue.
Then there’s the issue of how Killian moves through the world with baffling agency for someone who is constantly getting in scrapes with the law. Seldom do we see what the consequences are for some of his most brazen actions; the film simply cuts to the next most important moment. Harriet Sansom Harris is well-cast as Killian’s counselor, but it seems like she’s the only person telling him anything close to what he needs to hear. It’s one thing for him not to listen, but for no one to really tell him off (without the threat of violence) feels unrealistic.
Shot like a neon nightmare by director of photography Adam Arkapaw, the film maintains this sense of the real dread and the fantastical existential crisis in Killian’s mind simultaneously. Along with Majors’ performance and a terrific score by Jason Hill, the images are the essential element which keep us watching. As solid a character study as it is, Magazine Dreams remains less than the sum of its parts, but the handful of times where all the parts harmonize perfectly are the reason it’s worth watching. It may not be the definitive film about modern toxic masculinity, but it’s an interesting take nonetheless. | George Napper
