While many of the stock emotional issues have been covered by others' comments, I feel many have overlooked the film's acid satirical wit and its anti-capitalist undertones.
"In the Company of Men" is not, primarily, about the way men and women behave but rather is about exposing the deep hypocrisy inherent in the way corporate culture and modern Western society essentially rewards precisely those characteristics which in the same breath it purports to censure. If these men are 'evil', they are simply doing what they must to survive. As the last line testifies, 'I can sell pretty much as well as anybody' - selling is about winning at somebody else's expense: definitively so.
The strong emotional response to the film that many viewers have is entirely controlled - not only is it intended to generate a localised disgust for the behaviour of the protagonists but it is further intended to satirise the culture that rewards such behaviour: we are being encouraged to generalise our moral disgust.
So every scene is shot like a glossy sales pitch, smooth surfaces, corporate anonymity, we buy the dream, we become complicit (if we are not already) so become as morally decrepit as Chad, as Howard.
It is a mistake to see Christine as the final victim - she is not. She is merely a victim. The ultimate victim is of course Howard who Chad deliberately played in order that he might triumph, in order that he might take the other man's job, in order that he might win. The suggestion is implicit: he destroyed his colleague's work so that he would be demoted, he 'played along' with his heartache so that he could be rendered mute.
So we see Howard and Christine through the windows of a card, through the windows of an Office, as animals in a zoo. Just as when Howard first entered he looked in the mirror, so he is left finally blinded, muted, destroyed. All those tall buildings with all that glass and we can't see inwards: perhaps that is the reason why.
"Show me your balls." Sadistic only as far as any of us are 'responsible' for our own selfishness - that here is portrayed as another myth. Rather, such selfishness is exposed in a highly intelligent and thought-provoking film as no more than a manifestation of the behaviour necessary, expected and highly rewarded in a fundamentally amoral capitalist system.
As a work of cinema, the film suffers, as do so many good films, from being too clever by half for the majority of its potential audience. If his film is emotionally bleak, LaBute is seeking only to reflect the amorality of his subject.
"In the Company of Men" is not, primarily, about the way men and women behave but rather is about exposing the deep hypocrisy inherent in the way corporate culture and modern Western society essentially rewards precisely those characteristics which in the same breath it purports to censure. If these men are 'evil', they are simply doing what they must to survive. As the last line testifies, 'I can sell pretty much as well as anybody' - selling is about winning at somebody else's expense: definitively so.
The strong emotional response to the film that many viewers have is entirely controlled - not only is it intended to generate a localised disgust for the behaviour of the protagonists but it is further intended to satirise the culture that rewards such behaviour: we are being encouraged to generalise our moral disgust.
So every scene is shot like a glossy sales pitch, smooth surfaces, corporate anonymity, we buy the dream, we become complicit (if we are not already) so become as morally decrepit as Chad, as Howard.
It is a mistake to see Christine as the final victim - she is not. She is merely a victim. The ultimate victim is of course Howard who Chad deliberately played in order that he might triumph, in order that he might take the other man's job, in order that he might win. The suggestion is implicit: he destroyed his colleague's work so that he would be demoted, he 'played along' with his heartache so that he could be rendered mute.
So we see Howard and Christine through the windows of a card, through the windows of an Office, as animals in a zoo. Just as when Howard first entered he looked in the mirror, so he is left finally blinded, muted, destroyed. All those tall buildings with all that glass and we can't see inwards: perhaps that is the reason why.
"Show me your balls." Sadistic only as far as any of us are 'responsible' for our own selfishness - that here is portrayed as another myth. Rather, such selfishness is exposed in a highly intelligent and thought-provoking film as no more than a manifestation of the behaviour necessary, expected and highly rewarded in a fundamentally amoral capitalist system.
As a work of cinema, the film suffers, as do so many good films, from being too clever by half for the majority of its potential audience. If his film is emotionally bleak, LaBute is seeking only to reflect the amorality of his subject.