Director: Tom Ford
On the one hand, people talk about masculine toxicity, while on the other, they want men to exert their muscular prowess to protect them. When the situation warrants, they want a man to 'act like a man'. When they want to be left alone, they say, 'Don't gaslight me!'
This quite compelling movie has the same intensity as 'Cape Fear' (both Robert Mitchum and Robert DeNiro versions). It tells the story of a couple and their teenage daughter who are carjacked while travelling through the Texan countryside. The man is taken for a joyride while the wife and daughter are raped and killed. All through the movie, the man is mocked by the young punks hoodlums who carjacked the vehicle for not being manly enough to give them a good fight to protect his family.
The film's story is mainly about a novel draft written by an ex-husband for the ex-wife to read. The movie rolls as she reads through the draft and reminisces about their time together. During their stay together, the persistent issue that crept up was that the husband was not assertive and ambitious enough. Her push for him to sit and write his first novel did not augur well.
As the story progresses, a year later, the man, together with the investigating police officer, returns to the crime scene. As the evidence was weak to arrest the criminals, they took the law into their own hands. The man feels satisfied that he became man enough to kill his family's killers.
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| Amami spiny rat with no Y chromosome |
Scientists discovered that a Japanese rat species, the spiny rat, had no Y chromosome. Other chromosomes, however, evolved to ensure the presence of a male-determining gene to maintain the male-female distribution.
As with the complaint that modern men are being domesticated to the extent that the Y chromosome may risk being a vestigial one, fearing the brink of extinction, fear not. Their bodily hairs may reduce, and the skin may be unblemished, but the human species may not have to resort to parthenogenesis or self-pollination to procreate.
