Generally speaking, characters in the films of John Cassavetes aren’t people you’d want to spend too much time with. They might be like people you already know: a bit too unhinged, unpleasant, or outspoken for their company to be enjoyable. Throughout his directorial career, Cassavetes turned the camera on loud-mouthed protagonists often teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown. In A Woman Under the Influence, a revelatory Gena Rowlands plays a mentally-ill housewife whose psychological state is a point of contention for her short-tempered husband (Peter Falk). Faces focuses on a married couple (John Marley and Lynn Carlin) facing a disintegrating state of domestic matrimony—Richard, the husband, is distant and unfaithful. In Love Streams, real-life husband and wife Cassavetes and Rowlands play an estranged pair of siblings who struggle to make sense of their familial love. Quite often, the men in Cassavetes’s works are complicated figures who struggle to convey their love and emotions, and in his mid-career work, Husbands, the actor/filmmaker draws a searing portrait of three toxic men. It’s a close-up depiction of the realities and consequences of toxic masculinity—and an unflinching indictment of it.

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Presented in the opening credits with the subtitle “A Comedy About Life Death and Freedom, ”Husbands is a polarizing film that paints a portrait of three empty, toxic men who go on a lengthy bender after the death of a mutual friend. The three titular husbands, Gus (John Cassavetes), Archie (Peter Falk), and Harry (Ben Gazzara) are financially successful with families and an apparent inability to filter themselves. The movie begins with a series of still snapshots of the men; shirtless and swimsuited, flexing their biceps by the pool. Beer in hand, the men take hyper-machismo stances and have a great time doing it. It’s all in good fun, and in a more "traditional" comedy, it could conceivably be played off for lighthearted laughs. Only, this isn’t a traditional comedy, and Cassavetes is anything but a traditional filmmaker.

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Image Via Columbia Pictures

It’s a stereotypical image of masculinity, with charming, brawny men acting as they believe they should. These are guys who want to be men—or at least what they think men are. Archie talks about refusing to shower for his wife’s sake (“If I wanna stink, I’ll stink”), then speaks in near awe about an idyllic life of being sweaty, drinking beer, and hanging with guys he likes. Later, he lists off a series of sports in a rapid-fire manner, expressing his appreciation for each of them, as if he has something to prove by simply enjoying them. Gus mentions the unpleasant awakening that he’d experienced when he realized he couldn’t be a professional athlete anymore. Though they brawl and race one another, they certainly aren’t athletes (a scene in which the men showcase their abysmal basketball skills is one of the funniest in the entire film). Would they be any happier if they had been professional sportsmen? It’s hard to say, but their emptiness suggests not.

In a lengthy, tiring scene centering around a booze-fueled evening amongst strangers after attending the funeral of their friend, the men shout, make a scene, and break into disharmonious song. As the scene continues, they become more confrontational. They talk boisterously and argue over things of little value. As they interrupt each other and those around them, they never make any connections. Their behavior leads to the bullying and harassment of an older woman who was only trying to play along with their game. They criticize and berate her—only because they’re feeling drunk and mean. It’s how these characters are: they aren’t kind. They don’t have enough sympathy for these strangers to be wary of their behavior. If somebody’s hurt, that’s their own fault. These three guys are just trying to have a good time, and anybody’s feelings that get trampled along the way are collateral damage in the quest for...whatever it is that these guys are searching for.

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Image Via Columbia Pictures

It’s hard to be sure if even they know what they’re looking for. When they’re vulnerable with one another, it doesn't go anywhere. They’re too angsty, pent-up, and closed-off. A pivotal point takes place in a restroom: Gus pukes his guts out, Archie succumbs to a fit of dry-heaving, and Harry waxes the poetic on the psychology of vomiting. It’s a jarring contrast to the preceding scene, where, even amidst the guys’ outright insensitivity, their drunkenness heightens their fun. The gruesome sounds of the retching echo throughout the restroom and remind the viewer that this isn’t a glamorous depiction. This meandering bender has its dark underbelly. It isn’t all fun and games, whether they like it or not. That's why Husbands works. These guys aren't glamorized, not for a minute. Just as their puke-soaked bathroom jaunt unbeautifies their bender, the film itself portrays the men as abhorrent, obnoxious, and borderline detestable. Cassavetes's camera always lingers too long, making the viewer wait for a cut that is late in its arrival. They aren't narratively redeemed and absolved from their toxicity. Instead, their behavior makes them unbearable, and the movie keeps them that way to make a point: this toxic masculinity of theirs is often empty and without proper redemption.

Later, Archie insults Harry, and the two break out into a brawl as if physicality is the only language they truly know. When Archie questions Harry’s sexuality after he reasonably expresses his love for his friends, the men break out into a fit of laughter. It just seems like a joke to them, to be anything besides their close-minded image of a man. What could have been a touching, sincere moment is ruined by their insecurity. Can they ever connect—truly connect—with one another? Once again, they don’t seem to be able to express themselves with anything but humor and aggression. Their toxicity prevents them from expressing the complicated nature of their grief, thus rendering them incapable of overcoming it. The outdated modes of masculinity that they operate according to don't seem to have any room for a healthy release of emotion. Everything becomes filtered into crassness. Husbands portrays the toxic masculinity of these men as their main folly: it upends their ability to overcome grief, and it trickles out to disturb all those around them.

The men talk a lot but always seem to circumvent the elephant in the room. The fact that they’re undoubtedly affected, even crushed, by the untimely death of their friend remains under the surface. Isn’t that the whole point of their bender, though? To grieve their buddy, to make sense of his very meaningless death? Still, the guys don’t seem interested in expressing their grief or any other of their emotions, hiding it behind their boorish behavior. Gus, Archie, and Harry have a lot to say, but they don’t really say anything. It's largely the point of Husbands to show the emptiness of toxicity, portraying it as a road that leads nowhere.

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Image Via Columbia Pictures

Husbands succeeds in its point of damning toxic masculinity largely because of its unflinching, exhausting portrayal of it. The men neither grow nor mature. Had the film been shorter, much of its effect would weaken. So much of the runtime is devoted to the men and their insensitive behavior that it inevitably becomes an exercise in patience. This is put to its ultimate limit in a brutal scene where Harry is physically abusive to his wife and mother-in-law. His aggression is spontaneous and despicable. While his previous altercations with Archie seemed unwarranted, this is merely a cruel extension of that violence. He acts like a beast whose archaic urges are too mighty to control.

Harry’s a scoundrel of a man, and his violent behavior is condemnable. His physical assault is ended through the intervention of his friends, but the effects of his attack linger. Though the other two men don’t directly condone Harry’s abuse, they at least tolerate it. Cassavetes isn’t necessarily drawing a one-for-one comparison, suggesting that toxic behavior directly equals abuse, but he certainly makes a point of connecting the two. It’s through this hyper-macho ideology that such violence occurs. Husbands suggests that through the toxic masculinity that the men practice, more severe behavior is led through the gateway. By condescending to the women in their lives—and by suppressing their emotional vulnerability under their so-called rugged veneer—they are atrociously dismissing Harry's violence as being less severe than it truly is.

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Much of the film exists in a state of intense realism, thanks in part to the intrusive close-ups and lingering camera work. There are many long takes as the camera chugs on inexhaustibly, the frame placing the viewer at the table with the men as they carouse their way across English barrooms and casinos. It only makes it all the more discomforting when the men behave as they do. Practically every woman in the film is subjected to the men and their bullying. Apart from Harry’s wife, and the crooning woman from the bar, there are also the three women that the men attempt to pick up in the third act of the film. The encounters are awkward, uncomfortable, and unpleasant. There’s no connection between the husbands and their would-be mistresses as if the guys don’t know how to connect at all.

They're disconnected because of their toxicity, and Husbands knows this. Why can't they talk about their feelings rather than drowning them in booze and empty attempts at sex? Why do they abandon their families in order to brawl about barrooms and European streets? In its lengthy runtime, Husbands becomes an exhausting experience, precisely because of its exhausting characters. They set out in search of answers, and in all their untethered toxic masculinity, they find nothing but emptiness. Their toxicity alienates them from their wives, their children, and eventually each other. The emptiness they aren't able to overcome is too deeply rooted in their behavior to be removed without them abandoning their toxic ways.

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Image Via Columbia Pictures

It’s true that Husbands is mostly an unpleasant film: it’s meant to be. The company of these men is meant to be uncomfortable. They aren’t kind people, nor are they sensitive or understanding. At the end, when Gus stands in the driveway looking at his crying, unhappy child, he finally understands: this absurd, meaningless search was empty, and he left behind something that actually mattered to maintain it. Why is his child crying—did he miss his father, or (more realistically) is he sad that his father has returned? Gus doesn't ask, but it seems as though he knows. It's clear that the toxicity exuding from Gus and his friends suffocates any semblance of a healthy relationship, so there's no reason to think that it wouldn't transfer over to their parenting skills. It's a movie about men with children, but the children aren't seen until these final moments.

These are the children who are ultimately sacrificed in the practicing of the men's deeply toxic masculinity. If their intoxicated romp through Europe is a selfish form of therapy, their chauvinistic devotion to maintaining their own "masculinity" is the ultimate lack of consideration. What is it that he and his pals are running from? Is it death? Marriage? Or are they just running to prove that they can because they’re men who can’t be pinned down by anybody, anything? Through it all, they don’t seem to find anything. Sure, there’s a sense of camaraderie, but that isn’t anything they didn’t have before.

Cassavetes has a particular knack for making films that feel like they belong somewhere between a wordy stageplay and life itself. To some degree, his stories are exaggerated versions of the real thing, but they also aren’t exaggerated enough to feel fully fabricated. Beneath the fiction, there’s plenty of truth. With Husbands, which serves as a deep dive into the psyche of the toxically masculine, the truth is clear: Toxic men such as these exist, and their actions lead to nowhere but a dead end, leaving considerable damage in their wake.