Called to confront his ultimate fear – expressing his emotions on camera – Scottish documentary-maker Duncan Cowles occasionally assumes a furtive, wary expression. So he deserves credit not just for facing his own inhibitions in his debut full-length film, but for broaching the vast, ever more discussed, but still maddeningly nebulous topic of men’s mental health – and in an ingeniously light way.
With his kinda, whatchamacallit, you know, beating-around-the-bush narration, and propensity to zone out while shooting pretty shots of bumblebees, Cowles plays up the fact he’d rather be discussing anything but this. But freaked out by his own inability to tell his parents he loves them, he canvasses his family and friends about their emotional makeup. His father reckons Cowles’s taciturnity set in because of the general silence around his own dad’s alcoholism. One pal has a tactic to release repressed feelings: he permits himself crying sessions to precisely two Martha Wainwright songs.
While Cowles is holding it all in, the upside is that his natural reserve allows others to fill the space and their stories to speak; most disturbing is John’s, whose refusal to share his cancer diagnosis with his loved ones ended up almost destroying his life. One recurring theme is the need for fathers to button up in order to be strong for their kids, which has the net effect of passing on this damaging stoicism; Cowles’s lachrymose friend ends the Wainwright sessions once he’s had a son.
Wanting to break the pattern, Cowles makes the climax of the film his fumbling attempts to openly express love to his folks. His dad’s brusque inscrutability undercuts this – but also usefully illustrates how ingrained male prejudices about opening up are. Widening the circle of research might have produced fruitful insights here; is male reticence universal, or particularly endemic in Cowles’s northern European culture? But foregoing objectivity as its director opts for personal therapy, the film settles for a smaller but equally significant truth: change can be a case of quiet conviction and perspective shifts.
• Silent Men is in UK cinemas from 19 November.
