Directed By Elijah Bynum

Starring – Jonathan Majors, Harrison Page, Harriet Sansom Harris

The Plot – Killian Maddox (Majors) is consumed by his dream of becoming a world famous bodybuilder and one day gracing the cover of fitness magazines. He lives a lonely, regimented life, and his relentless drive for perfection only pushes him deeper towards self destruction, but beneath his tenacious pursuit of superstardom lies a desperate, aching need for human connection. As he battles both the limits of his physical body and his own inner demons, the film explores the lengths one man will go in his haunting quest for recognition in a world that often overlooks him.

Rated R for violent content, drug use, sexual material/nudity and adult language.

Magazine Dreams | Official Trailer | In Theaters March 21

POSITIVES

Hard to believe that it has been two whole years since “Magazine Dreams” was unceremoniously shelved on account of Majors’ off-screen controversy, and though the wait and speculation has been tumultuously cruel towards trying to comprehend just what this movie entails, the execution leaves the wasted time feeling all the more tragic, especially as a result of Bynum’s sophomoric directorial effort uncovering such a darkly uncomfortable side to obsession among competitive bodybuilding. As a writer, Bynum unapologetically taps firmly into the elements of toxic masculinity, roid rage, and homoeroticism, that inescapably stems from such a shallow sport and the many averted eyes lacking responsibility towards the monsters that they eventually create, offering plenty of stimulating substance for the audience to casually chew on, as these self-destructive conflicts start to overwhelm the man who irresponsibly created them. From the depths of our anything but honorable protagonist, this is realized most especially, with an overwhelming isolation factor and loneliness supplanted to Killian that balances his already frail and conflicting psyche, which could easily be misinterpreted as mentally challenged, but instead feels more aligned to being a disconnected drifter with an unhealthy obsession to fame and notoriety that nobody could possibly understand. While the exploration kept me faithfully glued and on the edge of my seat, as a result of the fiery intensity that Majors entails to the portrayal, the showmanship donned to the movie’s presentation is all the more entrancing, with unconventional camera placements during long take sequences, psychologically immersive editing cluing us into Killian’s traumatic history, and three-dimensional lighting schemes simultaneously emanating not only the glitz and glamour of the desired spotlight, but also a haunted embodiment that conjures the darkness and jealousy of Killian’s unblemished dedication. It could easily be argued that most of the events in the film play out in Killian’s mind, as there’s such a vivid evocativeness to the way these scenes are staged that reminds me of auteur directors like Nicholas Winding Refn or David Lynch, specifically in the ways they married nightmarish imagery with the consequences of the real world, in order to elicit something otherworldly to being under the slipped spell of a toxic mentality that only those involved could ever fully understand. It proves that Bynum certainly isn’t above spectacle, as much of his framing carries with it a surreal pageantry that only adds to the thickness in atmospheric ominousness that makes so much of the proceedings a continuously uncomfortable watch, serving as a bit of a cautionary tale to the dreams and ambitions that we sometimes irresponsibly ask for, while allowing the audience to seamlessly lose themselves in the overwhelming prestige of the stage, which intentionally rarely focuses on the responses of the audience, in order to emulate the aforementioned isolation factor that illustrates the juice never quite being worth the squeeze of Killian’s many sacrifices. Speaking of Killian, he’s portrayed breathlessly by Jonathan Majors, who with a physical and emotional transformation not only attains the single most meaningful work of his career, but also the kind that would’ve definitely been deserving of award recognition, if the film dropped in 2023, as initially intended. Majors is a ticking timebomb as this unleashed and uncontrollable character, both in the monotony of his convictions within various interactions with outsider characters, seemingly building to a volcanic eruption within his momentary lapses away from reality and into fantasy, but also the rush of anger and humility that fill those memorable moments involving the character’s own destructive vengeance towards those who scarred him, utilizing every square inch of a stage that clearly only has enough room for one. Just as visually striking and impressive as the bodily feats that Killian enacts towards following his dreams of superstardom, so too does Majors in attaining a rock-hard physique to his own real-life transformation, with ample opportunity in Adam Arkapaw’s hypnotically emasculating cinematography to lend itself to gawking at his immaculate feats, almost in the same shallow vein as those unfit men asked to judge such a barbaric display of masculinity. Lastly, I can’t praise the movie enough without discussing the key component that music has to the engagement, primarily Jason Hill’s synth-heavy score, which I’m always a sucker for. Hill embodies many of the same eerily somber instrumentals that made Disasterpiece’s compositions for “It Follows” materialize a cloud of thickly atmospheric dread, and here, with many similarly paced accompaniments in rhythm and tone, enacts a mystique to the frailty of the human subconsciousness that plays particularly nihilistic during those quiet moments of reflection for Killian, matched only by the loudly obnoxious deathcore metal music played in Killian’s car, whenever his mind ultimately gets the better of him.

NEGATIVES

At two hours long, the exploration and character study of the script drowns on for a bit longer than I would’ve preferred, with the film’s halfway mark serving as a proverbial crossroads between a pulse-rattling first half and trailing-off second, which became less tolerant the longer the pacing drowned on. The problem is that so much of the second half feels directionally aimless and episodically spontaneous, with less of the more downtime moments to Killian’s plight being sacrificed for more of the intensely dramatic, and while this builds to a climax that feels heavily predictable as early as the film’s opening ten minutes, the devastation of these moments become less impactful when stacked alongside each other, with little to no long-term spacing between them, leaving almost the entirety of the film’s second hour bleak with the kind of creative diversity and long-term arcs that made the opening hour one of the very best that I’ve experienced from any movie this year. In addition to an overly lengthy and redundant second half overstaying its welcome, I left the theater after seeing the movie feeling appreciative of seeing it, but without the desire to ever rewatch it again. This is not to say that I have a problem with uncomfortably experimental watches, especially in registering dramatic intensity, but there’s a real self-wallowing encapsulation to Killian’s arc that became tediously arduous by the simultaneous aspects of continuously smashed optimism and outsider irresponsibility, leaving it difficult to not only invest firmly in a single one of the characters assembled, but also towards feeling any kind of detectable empathy to Killian’s constructive design, to which the film reaches so heavily for during the opening act. If Killian wasn’t as destructive or irresponsible to any gleam of hope or optimism that comes his way, then I could’ve found myself taken aback for a man who surrounds himself with so many mean-spirited people, but the character’s continuously say die attitude to fly towards irreconcilable conflicts keeps him from ever feeling like the true victim in this story, and because of such I doubt that I will ever have the leaping desire to experience it all again, even if the direction from Bynum, and acting from Majors enacts such an unforgettable experience in the process.

OVERALL
“Magazine Dreams” turns the page on conventional obsessive dramas, with mesmerizing direction from Elijah Bynum that cleverly unearths the paralyzing confines of toxic masculinity on grand stage surroundings. While the film’s momentum is taken aback by an overlong run time that meanders the definitive epiphany chapter to Killian’s story, the dream of this film finding a deserving audience surmises in full to the exceptionally committed acting and transformation of Jonathan Majors, which similar to Killian’s own self-destructive tendencies, finds us with the conflicting notion of separating the artist from the music they were born to create.

My Grade: 7.7 or B