In The Company of Men

In the Company of Men (1997) is screenwriter/director Neil LaBute’s depiction of the psyche of corporate machismo in the mid-1990s. Having been emotionally battered by women he cannot understand, and unable to quote unquote stand up for himself, Howard (Matt Malloy) finds himself prey to Chad’s (Aaron Eckhart) suggestion to “hurt someone.” This utterance sanctions their ability to turn a love relation into something more manipulative, into a place where testosterone and narcissism circumvent openness and honesty.

Their manipulation of Christine (Stacey Edwards), a deaf coworker, is based on both befriending and romantically wooing her, and the plan is to later break her hopes by revealing the whole courtship as a ruse, whereupon they will contaminate her pureness, exploit it, stain it, and altogether desecrate it. In this guise, Howard and Chad are marked as predatory pigs, while Christine becomes the vulnerable “damsel in distress.” However, LaBute knows that Christine too is guilty of pride, for she welcomes the advances of two men instead of immediately letting the other know of her commitment to the first. While we sympathize with her, and later with Howard, this knowledge deepens Christine’s own psychological need to be loved.

All of the relationships in the film become contaminated, to some degree (and by a large degree for Chad), by self-interest. As such, Foucauldian power relations centers Chad’s place in the film, since we find that he possesses no reason to enact this revenge fantasy other than that the fact that, in his words, “I could.” This lack of rationalization mediates Chad’s character, in that there is no moral or ethical code to his being, but only curious ambivalence. Lacking any ethical burden, Chad feels no guilt or remorse, and consequently he never gets hurt. This is probably one of the most fascinating aspects of the film, since traditional storytelling suggests that Chad would awaken to some deeper realization, that he would find some auspicious reality beyond his initial nihilism, but LaBute’s film prohibits any transition into morality for Chad. Instead, he accomplished all that he wanted and walked away, clean and free.

More penetrating than his follow-up Your Friends and Neighbors (1998), and less meta-narratological than The Shape of Things (2003), In the Company of Men is LaBute’s scathing portrait of those damaged souls who wish to make another feel their pain, if only fleetingly, and a deeper examination of one person who is unburdened by traditional ethics.

Though the musical jazz interludes occasionally disrupt more than they emphasize the mood, LaBute’s film is troubling, knowing, and altogether haunting.

In the Company of Men: 9.5/10