Dreams Magazine Review – Powerful bodybuilding drama haunted by star Jonathan Majors’ assault conviction | film

forIn 2023, rising star Jonathan Majors is swinging for the fences and beyond in this massive psychodrama from Paul Schrader about a would-be bodybuilder, a role that catapults Majors himself into monster proportions. Many expected it to play a big role in the awards conversation, with key scenes sure to be featured in sultry videos at endless awards ceremonies, and evoked in endless op-eds about fragile masculinity. But no. Now it’s almost a modern movie com. mauditAll is forgotten, a cursed movie is now quietly coming out, and its star might as well be com. maudit also.

Majors plays Killian Maddox, an iron-pumping athlete who takes care of his disabled grandfather and cultivates a fan’s obsession with the stars of the bodybuilding circuit. He’s particularly keen on Brad Vanderhorn’s prepared beefcake, whose magazine Killian posters cover his sad bedroom walls, and dreams of putting them on those covers himself. Killian suffers from loneliness, depression, primary mental illness, body dysmorphia, and an inability to connect with women. At one point, he has a disastrous Travis Bickle-style date with Jessie (Haley Bennett), a co-worker at the supermarket where he has a day job. He is addicted to stimulants, which trigger a terrifying rage.

But the film and Major’s own career were sunk by his conviction in 2023 on two counts of assault and harassment against his then-girlfriend. The situation sounded alarmingly similar to the film’s script, but without its fanciful reassurances that the man in question was fundamentally nice. Magazine Dreams itself, though flawed by a cumbersome flashback structure in which he talks to a counselor, has strong moments and Majors is very good, especially in the bizarre scene when Killian insists on getting on stage at a bodybuilding event right after getting beaten up. The plot turns into an interesting revelation about #MeToo abuse, though the impact of this too is ambiguous due to Major’s private life. Majors, unclothed, provides a fascinating physics dissection of pain.