Putting yourself out there can be hard, especially when you are trying to get people to listen to you, but are we always at risk of losing our way in order to please someone else? Zarrar Khan’s The Lion Does Not Concern Himself fuses together the idea of a romantic comedy with commentary about the dangers of creeping towards the manosphere. Can something real bloom in an arena designed for gains and follows?
Mohammad Ali Hashmi’s Danny keeps his spirits up while working at a small gym by hoping that his fitness podcast, Danny’s Locked In Podcast, takes off. Having the notoriety would be great, but he also would love to be able to help his cancer-stricken mother with her medical bills. We meet Danny when he is working the front desk, and having a bigger presence online would maybe give him more cred with the other trainers, like Derrick, who don’t think that Danny should be doing more than welcoming folks into the space. Perhaps that dream seems far away since Danny currently only has nine subscribers.
When Naomi Eidinger’s Jen comes in to redeem a set of seven workouts from a personal trainer, she insists that Danny should be the one to help her. That interaction is the key in the bond planted between these two young people. They have a good time together, and the flirting begins naturally between them as he shows her the way around the gym. A real life interaction can be more rewarding than the pinging of an online interaction, but Danny has to learn the hard way about that real difference. When Jen discovers that Danny answers a listener questioning the presence of women in a certain space, it stops her dead in her tracks.
Khan’s film is clearly curious about how some young men could become fixated with hyper-masculinity and the collective consciousness that comes with it. If Jen didn’t enter the picture at all, would Danny become more obsessed with clicks and likes? Would a real life connection even help after a certain point? Khan keeps his film light while never sacrificing the serious questions that lurk off in the distance. More filmmakers could learn from how he mingles tones together.
