Lads About Town
HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN I A coming-ofage tale with a gritty twist.
Based on Rob Doyle’s 2014 novel of the same name, Here Are the Young Men follows a trio of Dublin teenagers in the months after leaving school, during the lazy and hedonistic summer days before they’re force to engage with the real world. “I wanted to explore that sense of what it is to become an adult; to have that release, to suddenly be allowed to do things that are taboo,” explains writer-director Eoin Macken. “There’s a certain texture to the book and I was keen to see what we could do with visuals and with music.”
The teenagers’ swansong summer of drink, drugs and no responsibility is underpinned by a moment of unravelling tragedy. Unable to talk about how they feel, they each dive into their own minds, revealing repressed emotion and notions of masculinity. “It’s a comingof-age story, but in a very heightened way and with a difference,” explains Macken. “These kids are growing up, but in extreme circumstances, which puts pressure on everything they do.”
The film’s urban backdrop is all too familiar to the Dublin-born director, who revisited old childhood haunts during shooting, including his secondary school and the beach close to where he grew up. “A lot of where we filmed were
places I knew emotionally,” he notes. “I wanted to try and shoot it in a way that felt inviting and that had a certain energy, how the kids would’ve seen it. When you leave a place and come back to it, you do see it in a different way.”
The cinematography is distinct, with block lighting and blurred focus stylistically mirroring the heady unrest of the young characters: “I wanted it to feel like you’re in a nightclub for as much of the film as possible. When you’re young, it’s that excitement and anticipation, of going out, of discovering places, of not knowing what’s going to happen.”
Here Are the Young Men boasts a host of talent – including Anya Taylor-Joy, Travis Fimmel and Dean-Charles Chapman – but it’s Finn Cole’s unbalanced Kearney who propels the story forward. Given a glimpse of life beyond the Irish capital and in desperation to prove his autonomy, he pushes himself, without redemption, past the boundaries of morality.
“When someone goes to a new place, like Kearney does, and he suddenly has all this freedom, he creates an idealised version of himself,” Macken says. “He loses all shackles and parameters around him and we see him become more and more fractured. It’s the idea of having someone in your sphere who’s doing something that isn’t morally correct. I was fascinated by the concept of how far people will go if you don’t hold them accountable.” GF
ETA | 30 APRIL / HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN OPENS LATER THIS MONTH.