TRIBECA 2022 | MOVIE REVIEW: "The Integrity of Joseph Chambers" Another of Machoian's Wounded Male Portraits

7/12 ForReel Score | 3/5 Stars

Men will literally go hunting alone in the woods before going to therapy.

This is me borrowing a tired Twitter joke format, but this is also me summarizing Robert Machoian’s sophomore film, The Integrity of Joseph Chambers.

Machoian made waves at Sundance Film Festival in 2020 with his debut, The Killing of Two Lovers, a cold, deliberate depiction of masculinity in jeopardy, set against the frosty desolation of rural Utah. His follow-up sees him reuniting with muse, lead, and producer, Clayne Crawford, and harnessing Crawford to bring another fragile, middle-aged father to life in an isolated setting. But Integrity is more stripped-down when compared with its predecessor, more minimalist in terms of story. There is emotional distance to be reckoned with, just like there is in Two Lovers, but now there is physical distance as well. Integrity is a simple man-versus-nature tale, told with patience and with little flourish.

This time around, Crawford plays the eponymous “hero” Joseph Chambers, an unassuming everyman who wants to prove to himself that he is cut out for a day alone in the wilderness, cut out to be a man who can hunt and provide for his family—at least, in the antiquated, “traditional” sense. He starts his morning by shaving away his beard to fashion himself a tough-guy moustache, then gently but brashly dismissing his wife’s attempts to dissuade him from his undertaking. The rest of the film sees Joe out alone in an autumn-hued plot of forested land in the US—maybe the northeast or the midwest—in foolish pursuit of some trophy of manhood.

Machoian and cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jimnénez work like they have before, relaying their tale via long/medium-wide shots and long takes, their refusal to cut allowing Joe’s follies to go from comical, to tragic, and back again in real time. The photography of their film doesn’t work to dwarf their ill-prepared protagonist in nature, exactly, but it doesn’t emphasize Joe as a man of the land either. His hunter’s garb is Sears catalogue chic, freshly purchased—a cartoonish exactimitation of what an outdoorsman might look like to a city dweller. And his body language indicates that he knows little about properly handling a firearm. The aspect ratio makes for a narrower frame, as opposed to one that is expansive, which give Joe’s surroundings a slightly claustrophobic feel.

Adding to the unease and creeping paranoia is the layered sound design. Like in The Killing of Two Lovers, Machoian’s team infuses Integrity with metallic rattles and low-register hums, juxtaposing these machine-like sounds with the natural sounds of birds chirping and trees rustling to throw Joe’s reality slightly off-kilter. The cello-heavy score does a fine job of lathering on additional tension. With a plot that unfolds in such gradual fashion, such elements are required to work overtime, but never do they become gratuitous.

One could say of The Integrity of Joseph Chambers that the film is anything but gratuitous. It is a straightforward picture, one not intent on any maximalist or leftfield/experimental approaches, and it goes about its story in a very unhurried fashion. This will have a double-edged effect with audiences, some finding the stripped-down approach refreshing, others finding it too uneventful and taxing. Inevitably, some will come out of this film simply wanting more.

As a work of realism, one that tries to get at the root of male panic, Integrity is largely successful. America’s white, middle-aged cis men are waking up to a world that no longer expects what they may have been raised to expect, and their identities, egos, and feelings of bravura are being thrown into peril as a result. Joe’s story is not one of the more complex and nuanced imaginings of this peril, but its telling here is polished and assured, and it works as a companion piece to the director’s previous effort. If you only have time in your schedule for one Machoian film, though, this writer recommends you go with his first.