As much as we lean toward separating the artist from the art, there are times when it’s impossible to ignore the parallels between the star and the work, and “Magazine Dreams” is a prime example.
Jonathan Majors gives the performance of his career as a tightly wound and violently temperamental bodybuilder in this intense character study from writer-director Elijah Bynum, and there might have been a time when Majors would have been in the conversation for best actor awards — but the release of the film was pushed back when Searchlight Pictures dropped it after Majors was found guilty of harassing and assaulting an ex-girlfriend. (Marvel Studios also parted ways with Majors, who had played Kang the Conqueror in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” and a number of other projects attached to his name were canceled.)
Now, some two years later, “Magazine Dreams” is seeing the light of day, and while there’s no denying the strength and depth of Majors’ performance, one can’t help but think that there’s only one person responsible for the relatively muted circumstances of this release, and the fact that Majors’ career has hit a major road bump — and that person is Jonathan Majors.
On to the film. With clear and obvious influences from films such as “Joker,” “The King of Comedy,” “Whiplash” and, most prominently, “Taxi Driver,” writer-director Bynum and Majors team up for a disturbing and blistering case study of a man who feels utterly unseen and is obsessed with making a name for himself.
Majors’ Killian Maddox has a very specific and niche dream of becoming a world-class bodybuilder who will one day be on the cover of magazines. To that end, Killian partakes in grueling workouts, consumes an unreal 6,000 calories a day, shoots steroids that are making him sick, plasters his bedroom wall with photos of famous bodybuilders and writes letter after letter to his idol, the champion bodybuilder Brad Vanderhorn, played by Michael O’Hearn. (Majors mirrored his character’s workout and diet regimen in real life, which is not necessarily a smart life choice but resulted in him looking like a perfectly sculpted Greek statue come to life.)
There’s something terribly sad yet sweet about Killian, especially when he’s looking after his ailing grandfather (Harrison Page), or speaking in halting tones to his grocery store co-worker Jessie (Haley Bennett), finally mustering the courage to ask her on a date. Alas, that date goes sideways due to Killian’s utter lack of social skills and inability to pick up cues (shades of “Taxi Driver” and Robert De Niro and Cybill Shepherd).
With the claustrophobically focused and sometimes borderline hallucinogenic-styled cinematography by Adam Arkapaw and the fierce music by Jason Hill contributing to our feelings of anxiety and unease, we see Killian unraveling time after time. He tries his best to control his temper, but it’s a battle he cannot win, whether he’s taking revenge on a small business that did a slipshod job of painting his grandfather’s place, confronting a man who did him wrong, or terrorizing a bodybuilding competition judge who gave him mediocre scores. Call the police? Go ahead. Killian doesn’t care. It won’t be the first time.
Killian (what a name) becomes increasingly unhinged, fixating on how to become memorable in life and/or death, acquiring a firearm, berating himself for his perceived shortcomings as a bodybuilder. Even though Killian has the physique of a comic book movie character (irony noted), he knows he is falling apart, physically and emotionally.
Thanks in large part to Majors’ brilliant and nuanced performance, we do have empathy for Killian, at least to a point. We see how the world has treated him and we understand how he has come to be filled with rage and why he has a disturbing fixation on making his mark on this world — but we also want him to get the help he needs and not just go through the motions of addressing his problems, and we fear for his future. “Magazine Dreams” is a portrait of a man who is running out of time to get it together lest he fall utterly and tragically apart.