Silence is golden – at least where men are concerned. The “strong, silent type” endures as an aspirational archetype, whether you are a man yourself, or simply someone who interacts with them. In popular fiction, the Jack Reacher action novels have sold about 100m copies. The big man’s catchphrase is, tellingly, not a phrase at all, rather, it’s an anti-phrase: “Reacher said nothing.” In film, one of the ultimate images of machismo is Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator: leather jacket, motorcycle and, famously, only 17 lines of dialogue in the whole of the first film. And at the frillier end of cultural representations of men, the likes of Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights depend more on their ability to smoulder a lady to a crisp with a glance than on their emotional articulacy.
It might work in fiction but, in reality, the “boys don’t cry” approach can be dangerous if it leads to men bottling things up or trying to shoulder their worries alone. Suicide is still the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK, with men making up about three-quarters of deaths by suicide.
Also disturbing, in its own way, is a study referenced in a new documentary Silent Men, which found that when a group of babies were covered randomly with pink and blue blankets, the babies assigned a blue blanket were picked up or touched less than those with a pink blanket. The unconscious attitude on the part of the participating carers was that boys don’t need to be comforted as much.
“It’s such a simplified example, but it just really was quite heartbreaking,” says Silent Men director Duncan Cowles. “It just shows that, from the get go, society is going to treat you slightly differently if you’re a man or woman.”
Silent Men is Cowles’s first feature-length documentary, following a string of award-winning shorts as well as the docuseries Scary Adult Things. He’s been compared to Louis Theroux for his likable, low-key observational style and the fact that no matter how serious his subject, his films have a levity to them. Of Silent Men, he says: “I didn’t want this to be like a serious, grim mental health film, you know? That was my worry around the title, actually. I thought: ‘Silent Men, is that a bit blunt?’ The original title for the film was Scottish Silent Blokes.”
But soon the focus broadened beyond Scotland to the rest of the UK. There he met and interviewed a number of men, all of whom struggle in some way with being vulnerable. John tells Cowles about how his decision to keep a health crisis from his own family led to suicidal ideation and divorce. Ainslie had difficulties expressing his own feelings in the aftermath of having a baby. And Larry is determined to take Cowles to a retreat for a weekend, where men will be encouraged to open up.
The film took a while to complete – Cowles started making it when he was 26 and is now 34 – and in its finished form is a gently compelling mixture of interviews, scenes of Cowles’s own attempts to become more emotionally open, and soothing footage of bumblebees and flowers captured in slow motion. It plays with documentary form throughout: Cowles feels you may want a time out at the midpoint, so pauses halfway through a talking head’s sentence. It may touch on some dark topics, but it’s not a punishing watch.
That’s entirely intentional. “I don’t think enough documentaries use humour in the right way, and people shy away from it because they think [male mental health] is a serious topic. So it should be. It is something that’s serious. But it’s tough to get people to watch independent documentaries, so I really wanted to have that balance of humour with a really serious topic, which hopefully makes it a more accessible film.”
That approach is maybe where the Louis Theroux comparisons come from, though where Theroux is throwing himself into white supremacist communities and interviews with Jimmy Savile, the Cowles approach – so far – seems to be more about ambling around pubs talking to regular guys. Is that fair? “Yeah. Duncan Cowles’s Super Mundane Weekends, that could be my next pitch. Actually, someone the other day was like: ‘Oh, you should do a documentary about Louis Theroux, that’d be funny.’ I don’t know if he’d necessarily want that, though.”
Cowles’s influences aren’t limited to Theroux – he also cites documentary-maker Nick Broomfield, reality-and-fiction-blurring comic Nathan Fielder and the absurdist Swedish auteur Roy Andersson as reference points. “Although Roy Andersson’s work is fiction, I like the way he sort of exaggerates the mundane. And there’s a real bleakness. Like, it’s super-depressing at points, but also really funny.”
That dichotomy comes through nicely in Silent Men, notably in a key scene that forms part of Cowles’s journey in the film, where he tries to tell his own parents he loves them. Part of the point of his quest, which is part therapy, part road trip, is that he hopes he’ll be able to actually sit down and say “I love you” to his mum and dad. He does this while filming them, and capturing his own reaction on a different camera.
