The Burden of Masculinity

As depicted by a really f***ed up film.

I watched a film about a ‘domineering cattle farmer’ from Belgium who has a problem with his knackers.

It was a lot better than that sentence suggests.

Though to be fair that is the worst premise for a movie I have ever heard.

The film is called Bullhead (Rundskop) and apart from being about criminal cattle farmers (in Belgium), it is really about what I would call the burden of masculinity.

Of course, I don’t mean so-called ‘toxic’ masculinity (vomit). It is possible to intuit some of the usual liberal sensibilities in the film’s subtext, but there is enough text for it to be a moving and powerful study of masculinity that actually resonates.

Without giving too much away, the protagonist (‘hero’ is too strong) Jacky Vanmarsenille has an unfortunate incident in his childhood that leaves him having to take regular testosterone injections for the rest of his life.

This transforms him into an angry, pent-up ball of pure rage, racked with trauma, insecurity, desire for revenge, and a biochemical impulse to smash up everything in sight.

His ‘accident’ renders him an outsider, full of self-loathing, unable to form normal relationships, and tormented by trying to live up to his culture’s idea of what it is to be a man.