'Silent Men' Interview
Duncan Cowles' Silent Men is a profoundly honest and often hilarious exploration of masculinity that asks, "Why do so many men struggle to show their feelings?" Cinema For All recently sat down with Cowles to discuss the film, male mental health, and being the subject of your own documentary.
What was the impetus of wanting to tell this story and tackle a subject that is underdiscussed?
The motivation behind Silent Men came from my own difficulty and frustration with not being able to express emotions to my family and talk to my family about important things. When I started the film back in 2016, I was aware of the quite terrifying male mental health statistics around suicide and addiction and how they were linked to being unable to open up and talk. That worried me. If I wasn’t able to get better and open up, was I going to go down a path of just getting worse every year? I could feel myself just getting worse and not doing anything about it. I had friends around me who had also dealt with this, and I’d never been aware of it. There was a lot going on around me at that time and I had these two paths: one of them was to do something about it and the other was to just let it get worse. I make films and so I thought I’d make a film about it, and it would force me to confront it and use the film as a tool to have some difficult conversations and meet other people and see how they’re dealing with their emotions and their coping strategies. So, it was a very personal motivation really.
It's interesting you mention that the motivation came from a journey you wanted to go on, because one of the things I think is so unique about the film is that you act as both maker and participant. It’s quite a vulnerable place to put yourself as a filmmaker, was that balance hard to strike?
Definitely. When I started the film, I didn’t expect it to be quite as personal. I thought “oh I’ll put a bit of me in to kickstart it, then I’ll go out and it will be about other people”. I didn’t expect to feature all of my family in those early stages. As it went on the film felt like it needed more of my story to work and the feedback I was getting on early cuts was that it needed more of my story. It was very uncomfortable to do that and it’s still uncomfortable. When I’m sat in screenings and have done Q&As it is uncomfortable, because you’re displaying all these vulnerabilities on screen, but that became part of the process of it. By putting that out I’m still constantly fighting this weird thing in me that wants to hide everything away, and I’m forcing myself to be more comfortable with being uncomfortable. The journey hasn’t stopped with the film, it’s kept going with the release of it and people watching it. But there were times when I just stopped making the film; I made a short film, took on other work and freelance jobs, and would constantly find myself asking what to do with this film. It felt like I would have to open up too much to make this film and so I would just hide away and avoid it. That’s what people do when things are difficult or there are difficult conversations in people’s lives, it’s much easier to avoid them. We all avoid the difficult stuff and that’s built into the fabric of the film.
It's almost like an extreme act of immersion therapy on your part.
It forces you to continue talking about it. Me, my mum, and my dad watched it at home together before anyone else saw it, to make sure they were okay with everything, and I felt I needed to have a little screening with them first. Then they came to the first screening we had in Edinburgh, and them watching it with an audience… My family and some friends who are in the film, my wife was there, and I thought “this is one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life”. It was almost more uncomfortable than the filming of it was, because it’s one thing uncomfortably filming telling your parents that you love them, what’s even more uncomfortable is then editing that into a scene where you’re even more clearly trying to tell them how you feel, and then having them there, and then answering questions about it… I don’t know if I’d recommend other people take this approach. There’s probably easier ways. Maybe seeing a therapist would be an easier thing to do? There’s less exposing ways to do it, but as a filmmaker I want to make things that communicate and speak to people. There’s no point in always doing the easy thing, right?
The film was made over a roughly 7-year period, in which time the world changed quite a bit, including how we talk about mental health as a culture, particularly as a result of Covid. Was that changing conversation something you were thinking about while you were making the film?
Yeah, it was quite interesting seeing it evolve in the background. There was probably a point in the middle where it wouldn’t have been the right time to release a film like this, because the pandemic just dominated everything. There was also a point where I just embraced how long it took, because it’s quite an uneconomical way to make a film and you would never be commissioned to make something that would take this long. But it became unique because you see people change over time. I changed and the conversation changed. There was quite a lot about male mental health when I started the film, charities popped up like Andy’s Man Club, who supported the release, and I watched them grow in the background. Then when we released the film there were hundreds of Andy’s Man Clubs around the UK doing really good work, and it felt like people were ready to talk the issue a bit more.
You can never predict the environment a film is going to be released into.
It’s interesting, because there’s been more awareness over the years, more organisations set up, but if you look at the darker statistics around say male suicide, they haven’t shifted at all. In fact, they’ve got slightly worse. The issue gets more awareness and discussion but there’s a frustration when more is being done than was being done before but things aren’t noticeably better. Maybe it will take a generational shift. Maybe we need to wait for the younger generation to grow up and see the difference then, because there’s great work being done in schools, but you need to wait to see the impact. Maybe 7 years isn’t long enough to see a societal shift, but it’s getting there.
You interview your friend and fellow filmmaker Ainslie Henderson in the film. I actually spoke to Ainslie back in 2023 about the release of his film A Cat Called Dom, and that touches on a couple of similar themes as Silent Men. As a man of not dissimilar age to you both, I’ve also been thinking a lot about these things. Do you think there’s something in the water for this generation?
There’s quite a lot of comparisons with that film, we’re all making work and sometimes they find ways to interlink. I think there is something with our generation, but I find it hard to know. In my artistic circles, people I went to college with like Will [Anderson] and Ainslie, we talk about these things quite a lot and are doing things to try and be better. Then I think about other people that I know socially and some of them are trying to open up and others just don’t want anything to do with it. I’m a filmmaker, so I don’t know if I’m the most accurate barometer of our generation. I do think there’s definitely a shift. Even parenting techniques, the guidance around that kind of stuff changes all the time. I’m expecting a baby in a couple of months and I’m reading this book about men’s role in the birthing process, and we’re encouraged to do totally different things to what would have been expected ten years ago. It’s a lot more about the men also getting to connect and be more present in the baby’s life. That wasn’t there before. Even things like paternity, I only get two weeks paternity leave, but even the fact that that exists is different to when my dad became a father. I think in general, isolation is getting worse, but in specific places things are getting better.
At one point you ask what one of your contributors, John, what he hopes people take away from his story, and I wanted to turn that question back on you. What do you hope people learn from your story and the journey you went on making this film?
Ideally, I’d like to empower people to feel less isolated in their struggles with connection and speaking to loved ones. It’s easy to feel like you’re the only one in the world at times and your struggles are so isolating. Through my journey maybe people can see bits of themselves in that and say, “well if he did it, I could do this conversation with my parents”. Someone came out of the first screening in Sheffield at DocFest and came up to me and said, “I’ve never told my dad that I love him before and I’ve always wanted to, and I’m going to go and do it now” and he just went with his phone in his hand and phoned his dad, and I could see him outside… He told him that he loved him, came back inside, came back to me and said, “I just did it”. I was so moved that he went and did that and made a positive change in his life, and that makes it all worth it. It’s not really about me anymore, I’ve done my journey and put it out there, it’s now for other people to watch it and take from it what they want.
Silent Men is available for community cinemas to screen now through the Booking Scheme.
Words by Patrick Greenhough.