‘Magazine Dreams’: Jonathan Majors Blurs the Line Between Art and Life in Career-Best Performance as a Raging Bodybuilder 

Alci Rengifo

Nearly three years after first stirring buzz at major film festivals, “Magazine Dreams” is finally being released with added baggage that only increases the intrigue around its plot. This is one of those films suddenly attached forever to the fate of its star. You cannot be gripped by the portrait on display of a walking embodiment of rage, confined inside determined ambition without thinking about the real life of Jonathan Majors. Applauded for his talent and attached to massive franchises, he was rising fast until allegations from a former partner of violent abuse, along with videotape evidence, turned Majors into a court case. Though it is unfair to associate an actor fully with fictional roles, in the case of this film, there is the unnerving feel of an artist who understands every seething moment.

In a role of incredible transformation, Majors plays Killian Maddox, a bodybuilder who spends most of his time lost in dreams of glory. He attempts to make training videos in his humble garage, where he plasters the walls with pictures of his idol, champion bodybuilder Brad Vanderhorn (Mike O’Hearn). Killian also writes letters to his hero, waiting for any sort of response. His daily life consists of taking care of his grandfather William (Harrison Page) and working at a grocery store, where Killian’s sheltered demeanor hides his crush on co-worker Jessie (Haley Bennett). Killian usually descends back into his obsessive private world of ceaselessly training, eating and prepping for a major competition. Another side to Killian is that he attends therapy sessions mandated after an arrest over a violent incident. His deep insecurities and unspoken scars can erupt when provoked or slighted. 

Had scandal not overtaken Majors’ public image, his performance in “Magazine Dreams” would be hailed as a physically stunning achievement. Like Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull,” Majors turns his very physique into a key element of the narrative, using it to express obsessive dedication, beauty and terror. Director Elijah Bynum, making only his second feature film, sustains a wrenching amount of tension. His screenplay doesn’t become a cliché but a genuine character study, allowing Killian to become a tragic American character swimming through the endless sea of a society’s drives. The racism confronted by a Black man, our sense of worth via success and fame, and the undiagnosed psychological cases wandering around every city find reflections in this character. 

Bynum opens the movie with Adonis sequences shot by Adam Arkapaw of Killian posing under spotlights, seeming magnificent before cutting to the real world. He is a repressed, awkward personality inside a hulking body. This is such a memorably tragic character. Killian speaks in jagged sentences that range from abrupt to sudden bursts of childlike rambles. When a painting company refuses to come finish work on William’s porch, Killian abruptly ends a phone call with, “I’m gonna split your head open and drink your brains like soup.” It takes a single trigger for him to go on a sudden rampage, demolishing the company’s store. When he gets into his car, Killian only blasts death metal. It’s like a conduit for what he bottles up all day. In these moments Majors avoids conjuring up another movie monster. He performs the character like a man uncomfortable in his own skin, nearly stumbling even when carrying out brute violence.

The film’s best scene creates that overwhelming sensation of being entrapped as a viewer with another character. It happens when Jessie agrees to have dinner with Killian, at first attracted to his handsome shyness. Then, Killian describes in an eerily nonchalant way the horrible event that left him orphaned, before going on an endless ramble about his dedication to bodybuilding and then proceeding to order a gargantuan amount of food (for himself). Haley Bennett’s acting is great subtly, letting her expressions read a shift from kindness to disappointment to becoming disturbed. Majors compliments the performance by not erupting but taking in the subsequent shame with quiet, wounded pride. A moment like this is then juxtaposed with moments where we see in detail the rigor in how Killian shapes his body. He injects steroids, which eventually cause tumors to develop in his liver, but which he refuses to remove because a surgical scar will ruin his chance at a competition. Majors reportedly had trainers on set to keep him at the required, professional bodybuilder level. 

The intelligent, sly element of Bynum’s script is that it begins as the story of a bodybuilder, but like Steven Soderbergh’s “Magic Mike,” it becomes about many other themes. At the core “Magazine Dreams” is a dissection of these individuals one sees on the news suddenly rampaging against the world. Killian is driven by demons that only slightly emerge when he loses his temper. While confronting someone at a restaurant, he tells a child not to drink soda because “it will make you fat and nobody will like you if you’re fat.” His letters to Brad Vanderhorn gradually take on an angry tone similar to the ignored fan in Eminem’s “Stan.” This too will lead to a psychologically shattering climax for the aspiring athlete, who lies to his therapist (Harriet Sansom Harris) about being contracted for a magazine cover or having a girlfriend. A later incident of racist police brutality only helps fuel even more Killian’s sense of displacement. 

In a rather bewildering move, Bynum’s direction only flounders right at the end, with a conclusion that feels too insincere if not unrealistic in light of the stark realism of the story. One wonders if it’s a case of the filmmakers getting gun shy about taking the narrative all the way to what feels like an inevitable, terrifying breaking point. For a film so well tapped into the American psyche, it then caters to our cultural desire for neat, happy endings. Ironically, the headlines only continue to contribute to its unnerving relevance, with reports now emerging of Majors admitting to having strangled his ex-girlfriend in leaked audio released by Rolling Stone. In “Magazine Dreams,” the actor’s talent is on full, impressive display and maybe the film will outlive the controversies. It is wise to sometimes separate the art from the individual, but art is also made powerful by personal experience. This is a dynamic performance where the actor truly knows the character in every pore.

“Magazine Dreams” releases March 21 in theaters nationwide.