Humanity (1999) User Reviews

Filling in the void

[iaido · 8/10 · 12 February 2001]

On the surface, L'Humanite is about a detective, Pharaon, dealing with his hyper sensitive nature to a rape/murder of a young girl he is investigating, but especially for his unrequited love to his neighbor, Domino. Pharoan is like a wounded, or fearful child, dumpy, perpetually slumped over, soft spoken, watery eyed, whereas Domino is considerably working class, modern, damaged, but not nearly as fearful, at least, not as openly sensitive; unlike Pharaon, she doesn't wear her fear like bad suit. But, that is just the surface of the characters and story, the actual definition of these key elements is left up to the viewer. The plot and the characters are fragments. Instead of miring itself in details, long monologues, heavy dialogue in general, or normal cinematic conventions, the film is purposefully left incomplete in many areas. Thus, the viewer is left to speculate how these gaps should be filled, left to ponder the scraps given to them.

For example, we are told Pharaon's girlfriend and child left him, but not why. Is Pharaon's sensitivity a product of his being abandoned by this woman, or was his sensitivity the cause of her leaving? Domino is clearly upset when Pharaon mentions the case of the rape/murder of the young girl, but is her reaction just empathy, or something deeper? For every detail we are given, there are often unresolved questions that are never conveniently answered.

It somewhat reminds me of a Shohei Imamrua film, like Vengeance is Mine or The Eel, in that the story unfolds through rather mundane scenes, but these scenes end up speaking volumes over the course of the film. You could also say it is a bit like Antonioni as well, as the ordinary, often bright, landscape often contributes just as much emotion as the characters. Basically, Brumo Dumont, like Imamura or Antonioni, eschews normal narrative conventions to tell a story. He lets the viewer fill in the gaps, and much of the film will always remain an engaging mystery.

Smalltown Blues

[edward_tan · 6/10 · 12 April 2000]

What's this about quiet small towns that so capture the curiosity and imagination of film-makers. Here we have another study by the director of the Life of Jesus (which incidentally is about a small town too)which shows, from the surface, how a Police Superintendant copes with the brutal rape and murder of a young girl. With this as a background, the film proceeds to show the aimlessness in the protanganist's life and his relationships with the people around him.

While the pace of the film is slow, you do get a feeling that such an approach is necessary. As such, you get many long shots. You also get shots that are very upfront and will no doubt make many in the audience feel uneasy.

There will be many different comments about the show. I heard some French guys coming out of the cinema and lauding it as "Pure Cinema" while others have complained that it was pretentious. For me, I thought it was boring.

I found it an enjoyable slice of French cinema, though it will obviously be controversial.

[Chris_Docker · 8/10 · 16 August 1999]

An enjoyable slice of French cinema. Unlike Hollywood movies - which usually force the audience into overdrive - this forces the audience to slow down and look at some of life's tiniest and most mundane features in great detail. The acting is superlative, as is the realism throughout. Goodness knows what the censors will make of it outside of France (I saw it uncut at the Edinburgh Film Festival). The basic story is a police hunt in a small town in France. But there's no gloss - both the police detectives and the other characters are full of human frailty down to the last wart and boil. they are all quite ordinary characters till you dig beneath the surface - and when you do dig their quirks seem somehow believable and natural.

Life is beautiful. But...

[nunculus · 9 July 2000]

The French writer-director Bruno Dumont achieves something rarely accomplished since TAXI DRIVER and ERASERHEAD: a way of looking at the world entirely afresh. Unlike those movies--or the recent, Expressionist CLEAN, SHAVEN--Dumont doesn't distort the physical world, make it elastic or dreamlike. But he somehow makes us feel the world is being recorded by a very wise child from another planet. Everything, absolutely everything, from human behavior to wind rippling over a field of grass, is seen as never before. Ezra Pound's injunction to "make it new" is stamped on every frame.

Pharaon is a slow-witted police superintendent who is anything but pharaonic. He had a girlfriend and a baby, now dead. (We are not told how.) He is friends with Domino, a big-boned, sensitive, slatternly woman next door, and Joseph, her handsome beau, with whom she seems to never stop having sex. In their small town, a little girl has been raped and murdered. Pharaon pursues this case, as he pursues a sort of inarticulate love for Domino. Along the way, a light dawns in Pharaon--a dreadful light. He becomes sensitive to the suffering of all living things--a pig hurt by the suckling of her young, all the way to a motorist getting a beating outside police headquarters. The effect this has is to create a kind of moral schizophrenia in Pharaon: he can filter out nothing. Like an overlap of Raskolnikov and Prince Mishkin, Pharaon takes both the world's sin and sufferings on his back.

But this gives only the barest outline of the experience of L'HUMANITE, which is not about its plot. Indeed, the relationship of Dumont's handling of the materials of cinema to the story itself is unique in my experience of narrative moviemaking. Like Abbas Kiarostami in his recent work, Dumont uses the landscape not to illustrate the story, but to propose a dialectic against it. Where the landscape acts as an argument for life in Kiarostami's TASTE OF CHERRY, here it does something else. It vibrates with feeling. In its childlike gaze at the hardness of people and things, L'HUMANITE tries to get at the shifting feelings underneath--the emotions and sensations so elusive there are no words for them. The movie proves that literary means--finding names--are unnecessary. Dumont finds aural-visual-rhythmic means to voice those emotions.

His techniques can be daring, appalling. Pharaon, gradually overwhelmed by the world's thousand and one cruelties, starts to spontaneously embrace (relative) total strangers, in scenes one can imagine giving audiences giggles. Dumont doesn't care.

L'HUMANITE is the kind of movie that, while you're watching it, you feel can drive you crazy in places, but which you know you'll live with and re-play in your head for the rest of your life. And Cannes naysayers to the contrary, all the performances in this movie--all of them, down to the tiniest--are perfect.

A note: I would like to thank the other people who wrote about L'HUMANITE on IMDB. With no other movie have I felt I learned so much by reading other people's responses, and particularly noting the details they chose to underline. For the authenticity and unabashedness of everyone's responses, I am truly grateful.

A fascinating catholic horror film

[ziggy-24 · 10/10 · 2 December 1999]

L'Humanité is undoubtedly the best French movie I've seen this year. It's somewhere between Robert Bresson and David Lynch, which is quite uncommon. This is a suspense movie, but the nature of the suspense is metaphysical. The spectator, like the hero (Pharaon de Winter), keeps on following false leads as he tries to discover WHO the murderer could be. He even suspects Pharaon himself to be guilty (which, in a way, is true, if we admit we're all guilty). The characters all seem to be on the thin border line between humanity and animality. Pharaon needs a physical contact with human beings and animal alike; most of the time, men and women are filmed as if they were beasts and vice versa. But the film bears no contempt for anyone. It's not realistic but, on the other hand, it has nothing in common with 99% of the fictions we go and see usually. There is something about empathy in L'Humanité that I had never felt in cinema before. If I had to connect it with a genre, it would definitely be an "ethological genre movie"… The screenplay is brilliant, the actors are so far away from what we expect from actors that they seem to come from another planet until we understand it's actually ours. Here is the riddle of L'Humanité: we live down here among strangers, and the nearer other people seem to be, the farther they actually are. L'Humanité is not made to entertain. If you're not looking for something else in films, don't waste your time, it has nothing in common with The End of Days.

sad and beautiful film

[causticjones · 7/10 · 16 August 2006]

This is a thoughtful and original film and the polar opposite of any Hollywood movie. It's slight plot is not what the film is about, it is in many ways a mood piece. The opening image of a vast landscape a lone figure running along the horizon is accompanied only by the sound of the heavy breaths of the runner, and sets the tone for the entire film.

The film is character driven and contains long periods of near silence and beautifully shot landscape. Its basic plot, the investigation into the rape and murder of a young girl, would suggest it is a thriller but this film is about it's characters first and foremost.

Our hero Pharon is a policeman who lives at home with his mother He has suffered the loss of his wife and child, how we never find out. The crime he investigates pushes him into a state of utter despair. This despair is not shown to us with any overblown emotional fireworks but with a heavy and quite sorrow which he carries throughout the film. He is portrayed by Emmanuel Schotte who justly won the best actor award at Cannes, and was unjustly booed for doing so. This may have something to with the fact that he is retired accountant rather than an actor. His face expresses the sheer anguish is a man at the end of his teether, by expressing nothing at all save for thin smile that seems to come not from joy but to stop him from crying.

The center of the film is Pharon relationship with his neighbor Domino played by Severine Caneele who won best actress and boos at Cannes to. She is also untrained and delivers a wonderful performance.

The investigation moves at a snails pace, and probably offers a more realistic look at police work than most films as witnesses are questioned and requestioned.

It is a slow and beautiful film and reminded me strangely of Hal Hartly's work, in that the charters and actors seem to be doing very little but are expressing so much.

Baffling, tedious, haunting

[JOE-166 · 7/10 · 7 November 2000]

I suspect that I understand very little about this film.

What I like about it is that it reminds me of the films of Robert Bresson and it presents itself as a protracted question, rather than a glib answer, to the question of what it means to be human.

The film explores murder and art as two products of humanity--almost to replace the usual antipodes of moral good and evil. Most of humanity falls in between--neither murderers nor artists--but still it is against these opposites that we (many of us, anyway) have to measure ourselves.

The film makers draw heavily on religious and sexual imagery--perhaps to stand in for spiritual and animal natures. But these images are teasing, and they do not add up to an overarching theme or statement--they merely reiterate the nagging puzzle of human nature and existence.

The film sets itself up--with its languorous takes, odd yet lifelike characters, and shocking imagery--to be reviled, and honestly it's hard to say whether the film really is just pretentious. Maybe it is if you see it that way.

The film is not easy. It is long. It seems long. And much more than most film, it remains in your thoughts and feelings (if you happen to be a thinking, feeling person) for a long time.

Alone among the films I have seen this year, it is the one film that, although while watching it I impatiently wished it would "get on with it," I have subsequently bothered to meditate on and find out what else I could about it.

"the Life of Jesus" (1997) and "Humanity" (1999) solidify Bruno Dumont as a genuine author

[dbdumonteil · 10/10 · 8 June 2005]

"the Life of Jesus" (1997), Bruno Dumont's previous movie ended with the murder of an Arab teenager. "Humanity" (1999) starts where "the Life of Jesus" ended: with the rape and the murder of a little girl in the same small town: Bailleul. Obviously, police is on the alert to launch an investigation and track down the slayer. A superintendent, Pharaon Winter (Emmanuel Schotté) has been assigned to find him again.

If you think that you deal with a sempiternal detective plot and that the movie will be exclusively built around it, you are partly right. First of all, on the surface, "Humanity" is akin to any detective film with the usual ingredients of the genre. Yes, but Bruno Dumont, the director takes these ingredients back to concoct a recipe in his own manner. The first merit to be attributed to his work is that it bewares of every commonplace and every easiness of fashion. All the clichés which bit by bit endowed in an artificial way the genre of the detective movie have been shelved and consequently, Dumont's work is a real breath of fresh air. Now, if you take a closer look, the quoted investigation plays eventually a subordinate role and almost serves as a pretext to a nearly documentary about Pharaon's life. The less we can say is that his portrait is a far cry from the usual portraits of cops French and American cinema have been cramming us for several decades. So, Pharaon Winter is a policeman in Bailleul. He's the great-grandson of a famous painter with the same name. Throughout the film, we learn vague scraps of his tumultuous past life including this most important one: he lost his wife and little girl in an accident. Now he lives with his mother. He is also secretly in love with his neighbor, Domino (Séverine Cotreele) although the latter has a lover, Joseph (Philippe Thullier). The three of them regularly go out either it is in restaurant or by the sea...

So, Dumont goes beyond a simple history of killing to shot a real study of customs that would be worthy of an entomologist. Not only about the life of Pharaon but also on the close relatives who surround him, notably on Domino's and Joseph's. Then, to plunge more on the contents of the film and for a better understanding of it, let's write Dumont's words about the main reason which incited him to shot this gem: "I wanted to make a movie that would deal with the love of humanity while bearing in mind the reality which is grievous". Indeed, this humanity suffers and is made of rather dumb or sad human beings. and we mainly perceive them through Pharaon's eyes which are full of empathy and sympathy. With the presence of Pharaon, we learn to like them and become sensitive to their sorrow. In the last sequence when the murderer has been found (I won't reveal who it is), Pharaon kisses him on the mouth. If you don't bear in mind Dumont's words, of course, it will seem ludicrous to you but it is perfectly coherent with the philosophy of the film. On another extent, Pharaon sympathizes to the humanity's pain but this reality can be sometimes unbearable (the primal scream in front of the Eurostar, the embrace with the male nurse at the mental hospital. At last Dumont isn't afraid to shot the brutish sides of this humanity as the wild sexual relations between Domino and Joseph testify.

"The Life of Jesus" brought out a strong Bressonian odor in its cinema writing. In "Humanity" it fills the whole movie so much that Dumont could be Robert Bresson's deserving grandson and heir. Although he declines any link of relationship with the author of "Diary of a Country Priest" (1951), their respective cinema approaches perfectly agree: an absolute supremacy of the image, rare or reduced to the extreme dialogs to make the action progress and hiring of non-professional actors. Dumont's directorial style perfectly exploits these features and silence speaks much louder than dialogs. Through the actors' countenances and gestures, the viewer can guess or try to find what the comedians may think of. Dialogs are largely scattered throughout the flick, they notwithstanding contain another part of brilliance from Dumont: with few dialogs, he can express so much... Furthermore, Dumont distinguishes himself from Bresson and perseveres in his way with characteristics which belong to him. By watching this film, we can feel that there's such a will to depict life as it really is without distortions or extravagances and there's such an intensity in the presentation of Bailleul that it is close to the extraordinary and sacred. And of course, like in its predecessor, there's always this sharp sense of detail (which says a lot about several characters), of space and observation which contribute to solidify "Humanity" in its place of winner.

Such an arty work would be no worth without its actors. Like in "the Life of Jesus", these non-professional actors seem to live more than to act what they go through. One can't forget Emmanuel Schotté's neutral performance and his lifeless, melancholy face. Robert Bresson would probably have cried to work with him...

"The Life of Jesus" was the act of creation of an author, "Humanity" is the step of maturity and for Dumont it is astounding. A pure marvel as well as an undeniable tour-de-force in the so much massacred genre of the detective film, "Humanity" leaves an indelible mark in our mind. The odds are that this slow-paced, one of a kind detective film will throw a viewer or two, used in watching whodunits shot in a vigorous and dry manner but if you are sick of them, why not spend a DVD evening in front of this gem? If it hypnotized you, maybe will you see the world differently.

Too Slow needed a lot of Editing

[S_man28 · 6/10 · 21 March 2004]

L'Humanite was a very slow paced movie. Some of the scenes in

the movie were so slow and need to be cut out. The movie was

2hrs and 20min and should of been 1hr and 45 min. L'Humanite

story was very bitter and the sex scenes were not really needed,

but I wasn't complaining. I thought the movie should of gone

more towards the young 11 year old death then putting the main

story about the police lieutenant that found the body. I really didn't

care about the women Domino and the crush the police lieutenant

had. I thought L'Humanite was too slow and only thing that kept

me watching was the soft core sex . Cannes should of picked a

better film for it's Grand Jury Prize and not this really boring movie.

Also Whats the deal with a police lieutenant still living with his

mom.

** out of ****

Tedious, ponderous and miserable

[Olivia-2 · 1/10 · 23 August 1999]

I saw this film at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and would not recommend it. It is two and a half hours long, during which nothing much happens at a wading-through-porridge pace.

The main characters are gormless and totally lacking in charisma or personality. No-one smiles at all during the film (neither would I if I had their lives), and although Domino seems to have a healthy sexual appetite she doesn't seem to enjoy sex at all.

The whole experience is depressing and ponderous, the director lingering over each scene in a way that drove me crazy rather than striking me with the beauty of his technique.

Too many questions were left in my mind: why does he sniff the Algerian man's head? Why does he levitate? What is he looking at over the allotment fence? Why does he kiss Joseph? Why did we go and see this rubbish rather than ordering another bottle of wine in Bouzy Rouge?

Fast-paced and exciting...a real thriller!!!

[returning · 10/10 · 12 January 2005]

The previous comments for this film have really disappointed me. I'm admittedly quite out of touch with what's suitable for the masses and what's not (and has resulted in some angry friends having endured two hours of what I guaranteed them they would enjoy), but I cannot for the life of me understand how a film like Kill Bill, which can be summarised in two plot synopsis sentences, can be praised for it's creative plot and innovative style, while this film, a stunning meditation on universal themes and challenging in its methods can be called slow and pointless. How can people expect philosophical themes of existence, morality, and individuality to be fully realised in a fast paced film subverted to the Hollywood method. It simply cannot happen.

Revisiting this film, I was most struck by the editing. Which scenes are chosen to fade into another. Connected to this is what Dumont chooses to include in the film at all, and when you think about what the film is dealing with, it is incredibly abstract and precise, not slow and convoluted. Of course we have Dumont's industrial shots, contrasting nature (the garden, serenity) with modern architecture (the building in England, consequently, the scene of a fight in the distance. Dumont is a master paralleler, if he can give away plot details visually and creatively instead of having his characters state it explicitly, he will do it, making the dialogue as pure and distilled as the film itself.

This is a hugely important film. Not only for continuing a movement in film that is either perverted (the Dogmes) or wrongfully seen as self-indulgent and pointless, but for separating the chaff of cinephiles.

5 out of 5 - Essential

Tedious and over zee top

[=G= · 7/10 · 20 May 2003]

"Humanite" appears to be a film about a child murder/rape and the search for the killer. In fact, the film is a character study en masse which tediously examines a handful of players with Schotte at the center as a rural cop. A critic's darling because it is oh so different, "Humanite" could be said to be avant guarde neo-hyper-realism. Or, it could be said to be a load of crap. The film does not equal the sum of its parts and is frustratingly incongruous for no apparent reason. I personally found it strangely fascinating. However, I suspect the film going public at large will reject "Humanite" as tedious and too over-the-top. Good stuff for cinema sophisticates into French film but certainly not for everyone. (B)

Hated this film with a passion unmatched by any film I have seen in a long, long time...

[Embley · 1/10 · 5 October 1999]

I can't quite imagine what the Cannes jury saw in this film - unless it was some cruel joke they came up with to torture film goers - if it was it worked..

I should've left - I deeply regret that I did not, but I thought (wrongly it turns out) that SOMETHING might happen to explain why this film would be well thought of.. In fact it just became more and more frustrating - especially at the end with the levitating, the kiss and Phaeron's handcuffs - why why why?!

The film went back and forth between utter torturous boredom (don't get me wrong - I don't mind a slowly developing story but there wasn't even that!) and shocking close ups of monotonous sex scenes.. And it certainly wasn't erotic - if anything quite the opposite..

All I can really say is if you value your time at all avoid this film - it will most likely waste your time and energy and you will end up as aggravated as I did.

Not for everyone maybe, but for me.

[ido_h · 29 March 2000]

It is said that Humanite is not for everyone. And i would surely support that claim since I am a steward in the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and had to get up, about every two minutes to open the door to someone sneaker.

Still, I managed to get quite a clear impression of the film which is in my opinion a superb one. Although many people find themselves puzzled by the characters (virtually everyone in the show i attended came out of the cinema looking almost personally insulted by the film) i think that if you know and love Dostoevsky's books you won't find them so hard to understand. Pharaon is simply Prince Mishkin. He is assulted by the bluntness and cruelness of existence and the crime he tries to solve - but is overwhelmed with humility, love and compassion to the world. While his friend make love in a way that seems almost like a rape he makes love to the world, to the clods of the earth. When he rides his bicycle his upper body seems to be moving as if he was making love. But most of all he feels diligent compassion to the world and it's assaulters. The film shows the violence everywhere. Pharaon sees this violence and with his deep gaze manages to disarm it (with protesters and with Domino). I think that Pharaon is a really great acting performance. Pharaon like Mishkin in Dostoevky's notebooks 'sees not in the faces of people but in their hearts.'. The investigation taking place is like an investigation of the inner self. Of the human soul, of humanity. It's a category against Humanity and Pharaon's who is the categor manages to find compassion to humanity. Its sort of like an 'apocalypse now' in rural france.

On making Enemies

[Thorsten_B · 10/10 · 7 January 2007]

There are good films and there are bad films. Sometimes it looks as if good and bad are only measured subjectively. Since film is art, and since there are no "laws of art", but aesthetic tastes involved, one is tempted to agree. However, this is not quite true. There are films that managed to hurt the feeling of viewers not because of their lack of quality, but because of their inconvenience. They force the viewer to see things differently, to think a bit more, to say good-bye to the usual, traditional, uninspiring, superficial entertainment they are used to. Sometimes, people will learn from these challenges what films can also be – they are taught to appreciate films in a different manner, and they are thankful for the experience. But some viewers dislike being challenged. They want to see the breaking-up of traditional; they don't want to be intellectually involved. They have certain expectations, and they like being disappointed. Which is why they are angry at these particular films. For them, abandoning the usual patterns is like being forced out of their homes. Thus they strike back: They call the film rubbish, boring, stupid. It's less likely that they will say: It's too different to be liked; I don't want differences. Rather, they conclude that their personal taste – which is, after all, also the taste of the "majority" – is the "right" taste to have. Films that don't fit can't be so good. No doubt bad films exist. "L'Humanité" is not one of them. It's a challenge, but it will only work if what you ask of cinema is more than just being entertained for the moment. If you want a fast and furious dinner of the usual, don't bother to watch. This is a philosophical way of movie-making, designed only for very few people. Like all great films, it will find it's audience and remain. Unlike the bulk of average films, it inevitably also finds it's enemies. However, this is nothing to worry about. Depending on who dislikes it, it is rather a sign of quality.

The Humanity

[MogwaiMovieReviews · 6/10 · 27 August 2021]

I'm not really sure how to rate this one; this story of a police officer investigating the rape and murder of a child is overlong, ponderous and meandering, but it has a haunting power and moments of unusually deep feeling which break through and rise above our usual experiences and expectations of a 'movie'.

The director, Bruno Dumont, follows on in the footsteps of Robert Bresson in casting only amateurs as his actors, which in most cases is very obvious (and in the case of the killer, probably detrimental) but results in an idiosyncratic sense of realism which stays in the mind. The greatest triumph of the film is the discovery and casting of Emmanuel Schotté in the lead as Pharaon: his portrayal of a man barely able to carry the death of his own wife and child while assaulted by all the beauty and unimaginable horror he encounters is one for the ages, and his Buster Keaton-like stone face seems to contain all the sorrows of the world. As far as I can see, he's only (briefly) acted once again since then, so he sort of belongs in that select group of folks like Maria Falconetti and Nadine Nortier who give the world one glowing scap of immortality and then leave the stage forever.

The ending puzzles me: once the murderer is discovered, Pharaon embraces him - actually kisses him - and, with an inscrutable expression and great purpose, leaves the room. Then the final shot is of Pharaon himself sitting in the police station in handcuffs. I intuitively take this to mean on some christlike level, Pharaon has reached a level of humanity in which he is prepared to take on all the sins of the world and change places with even the lowest of the low, but there's really not much more than Schotté's performance to lead me to this conclusion, and I can understand how many people would be frustrated and appalled by that as the payoff. The film doesn't succeed in any way as a typical police procedural, and so one's appreciation of it will entirely rest on how much they are prepared to accept it for its own thing. I was gripped by it throughout, but also felt it could have been more tightly made and much clearer in what it was trying to say.

A Movie With Human Characters

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 23 October 2004]

In France, in the small-town of Bailleul , the weird, melancholy, lonely and widow police superintendent Pharaon De Winter (Emmanuel Schotté) is investigating the brutal murder of an eleven years old girl, who was raped while returning from school. Pharaon lives with his mother, and spends most of his leisure time with his neighbor Domino (Séverine Caneele) and her fiancé Joseph (Phileppe Tullier). Pharaon feels a kind of platonic love with Domino. The police department staff is being pressed by Lille and Paris to solve the crime and a strike of the workers of a factory. This French low budget movie is developed in a too slow pace and has very human characters. I liked it a lot, but I recognize that audiences only used to watch American movies will not like 'L' Humanité'. In Hollywood, this 142 minutes running time film would be an American 30 minutes short story. But lovers of cinema as art will certainly appreciate this simple but well directed story. The trauma with the character of Pharaon, being consumed by his grieving for the death of wife and daughter, by his repressed love for Domino, by the scene of the brutal death of the child and by the pressure of the command of the police, is amazingly performed by Emmanuel Schotté. I did not understand the kiss of Pharaon in the lips of Joseph in the end of the story. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): 'A Humanidade' ('The Humanity')

Astonishingly bad, especially considering the good buzz

[blammm · 1/10 · 1 March 2001]

European films may be slower-paced and less plot driven than American films, but this takes it way too far. It also show a whole bunch of incompletely drawn characters doing inexplicable things. It's not fantasy, it's not even surreal, it's just awkward and bad.

What's the message here? That people in France are pensive and gaze morosely a lot? That they like to watch other people having sex? They they spontaneously scream or touch a stranger on his neck? Do not wear a watch when seeing this film, as you will be astonished at how little is explained or learned over huge stretches of time.

This is the story of a "police superintendent" who is deeply troubled by the brutal murder of a little girl, though actually he seems troubled before then. He is not merely upset at his own personal tragedies, but apparently mentally quite slow, behaving very much like a learning-disabled six-year old child. He stares blankly a lot, walks with arms rigid like a little kid, speaks in meek, simpering, tones, behaves quite oddly in all of his interactions (though no one seems to notice or care, even when it is supposed to be police business). He's not a troubled cop, more of an outpatient. Picture Andy Kaufman's Latka character on Taxi, but without the humor. He is not only not believable as a policeman he is not believable as an adult. That he won an award for this interpretation of his character is truly amazing -- unless he was playing the part exactly as written and the fault lies with the weirdos who scripted this thing. The plot is clearly secondary. Do not expect to see anything remotely like what police would do if a little girl was found murdered. This not that important, though the implausibility of their behavior is sort of insulting. The problem is that the rest of the film makes no sense either. That leaves the long lingering close-ups of fields, vegetable gardens, people's faces etc. The ending struck me as especially ridiculous -- totally unsupported by the events leading up to it -- unless you think, "What's the worst way this film could end?"

There is lots of sex and nudity, which is supposed to mean something. You want vaginas? You'll see vaginas. Not to worry, it's art. It has deep meaning, what I am not sure. And the protagonist, despite his innocent weirdness, seems to have some sort of homoerotic neck or jowl fetish.

Finally, the subtitles are in white and frequently appear on a white background -- very hard to read many of them. On the other hand, there isn't much dialogue, so this isn't a big problem. There is also very little sound -- not even ambient sounds you would expect to hear -- in the film, contributing to the emptiness of the whole experience. The old Woody Allen would have had a field day parodying this work.

That this is an award-winning film is sad. I would hate to see the losing films.

Enjoy.

Difficult, but ultimately rewarding (possible spoilers)

[The Truth · 9/10 · 18 April 2000]

Of the hundreds of movies I've seen, L'Humanité was perhaps the most difficult to watch, and certainly most difficult to review. On the surface level the film is tiresome as hell. The story revolves around the murder of a young girl, and the main character, Pharaon De Winter, is a policeman investigating the killing, but L'Humanité is no murder mystery. There isn't much happening in this film; it consists mainly of shots where the three main characters do boring things in a boring little French town. There is a triangle drama between Pharaon, his friend Domino and her husband Joseph, but since L'Humanité isn't a love story either, the relationships between these three are displayed in a dull, almost overtly mundane way. On the surface level L'Humanité is about real life, and not only that; it's about real life taken to it's most boring extreme.

What makes L'Humanité such an extraordinary film is not what's on the surface, but what's beneath it. A major theme in the film is hidden emotions, the inability to express one's feelings. This is displayed with the help of three excellent actors and an outstanding cinematography. Almost every scene is filled with unsurfaced tensions, conveyed both through the acting and through the visual imagery. Yet, although the visuals are an important part of the movie, L'Humanité is not a metaphoric film. When, for example, Pharaon watches a dark forest holding a bouquet of flowers in his hand, it's not important what the flowers and the forest symbolize, but what Pharaon is thinking in a situation like that. This is the true strength of the film: it's ability to show us the feelings and emotions hiding beneath the most mundane of situations.

Another strength of L'Humanité is the character of Pharaon. He talks little, and usually just stares blandly into the void. Yet he is in a strange way almost a messianic figure, carrying the pain and hurt of everyone else on his shoulders. This all-absorbing empathy is Pharaon's only outlet for his own feelings, just as sexuality is for Domino and anger for Joseph. Pharaon is present in almost every scene of the film, and although this makes us get quite bored of him, when the movie ends we still kind of miss him because we have grown so used to his persona and his mannerisms. Only a few films have the courage to display such an omnipresent character.

Though most of the scenes in L'Humanité are perfectly made, there are also a few which seem completely meaningless, and this makes the film feel somewhat too long. Also, although I liked the film's ending, I was disappointed when the murderer was revealed. The identity of the killer worked well as a story vehicle, but no true motivation for the murder was ever given. Considering that L'Humanité is totally character-driven, this is a disappointing shortcoming.

Despite it's few flaws L´Humanité is still a compelling cinematic experience, a movie which is unlike anything else ever seen on the screen. If you have the courage to try something altogether new, this is a film to see.

long, boring, slow french small village life

[camel-9 · 2/10 · 15 September 2000]

This two and a half hour long film was shown recently at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) at a 10 PM show. There was a scheduled 1 AM show after that, but wondered if anyone was going to stay awake to see that until 3:30 am. The opening scene is of a man walking in a field, and it lasts four minutes of movie time. It is an ominous sign of what's to come: a good 144 minutes more of pretty much the same. There is a scene of a man and a woman against a wall, standing in the sun. It is repeated 15 times, with very sparse dialogue. Occasionally, these very long slow sequences are interrupted by shocking stills, such as a close up of female genitalia, shown for one full minute of film time (audience crowd laughing in the last 20 seconds, as to say, "what's the message?"). The story resembles Dostoyevsky's novel "The Karamazov brothers", in which a cretin falls in love with a woman of easy morals. In one of the rare instants in which the crowd was laughing (more in desperation to try to justify having been there already a full two hours to see nothing happening) was when the statement by a british tourist that he couldn't see things clearly since the Eurostar train was traveling at 180 miles an hour, was translated by the translator with automatic switch of units of measure from English System to Metric system to "they couldn't see things clearly since the train was traveling at 300 kilometers per hour". What was amazing about this movie is that the quality of cinematography reveals that alot of money has been spent on it. This was no film kitchen 8-mm experiment. It was carefully planned, structured, acted, montaged. Yet, I got so little out of it. Some comments indictated on the excruciating detail, such as the minutae of a dandling key chain on a door just opened. Okay, it was noted, but what was the purpose? Some corageous people in the audience walked away after the first hour. The rest remained out of curiosity: there must be something happening at the end. There never was. And maybe that's what the film is about. All the movies at the theater are action-packed. This one wants to be different. There is nothing happening.

A dark, depressing, naturalistic film about personal devastation

[ThreeSadTigers · 24 March 2008]

Bruno Dumont is something of a controversial filmmaker, producing singular films that draw on the influence of people like Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman and early Michael Haneke in a clear attempt to create an enhanced state of realism that works both for and against the film and the audience. Also, like his contemporaries Gaspar Noé and Carlos Reygadas, it could be argued that Dumont makes films that challenge the viewer to engage with a story that will undoubtedly take us to some very dark and often shockingly immoral places; giving us characters that are morally ambiguous, often loathsome and, in the case of our central protagonist here, almost pitiful. There aren't many filmmakers who would choose as their hero of a bleak detective thriller an innocent man-child who seems to be as socially inept and emotionally damaged as a person could possibly be, and yet, with Police Chief Pharaon De Winter, that is exactly what we get.

Dumont makes his bleak, desolate vision obvious right from the start, with the horrendous discovery of a murdered and mutilated child left naked and bleeding in a stark, autumnal field. The image is both shocking and brutal; with Dumont giving us a punch to the stomach right from the very first frame with a lingering close-up of the wound and filleted body parts. It's an image that both establishes and surmises the film as a thematic whole; the loss of innocence being central both with the murder of the child and with the character of Pharaon himself. It is the idea of back-story and the fragile demeanour of Pharaon - and to an extent the evocative performance of non-professional actor Emmanuel Schotte - which anchors the film, giving the audience an emotional spectator. He is also our representation within the film, mirroring the feelings of the audience if not quite our actions. After the aforementioned discovery there are no macho heroics; Pharaon reacts on an emotional level unseen in films of this nature, running back to his car, tears streaming down his face, lost in a kind of detached melancholy that continues throughout the film.

Over the course of the film, the narrative continues to unfold at a slow and deliberate pace, though we quickly realise that the real detective story at hand is not necessarily about the murder of the child, but more importantly, what has happened to make Pharaon the way he is. Has Pharaon had some sinister part in all of this, or is he merely a constant observer. The idea of voyeurism is an important one in Dumont's work, with the camera rarely moving; always static, removed from the context of the scene and merely recording things for our benefit. This gives the film a greater degree of realism, though may be a little tiresome for viewers weaned on a more westernised approach to cinema, with one hypnotic scene in particular finding our central protagonist tending his allotment for what seems like the best part of fifteen minutes.

As the film continues to unfold, and the clues begin to add up, we realise that this isn't going to have a clear-cut, moralistic ending akin to a routine police/crime thriller. Then again, with a central character who lives at home with a controlling mother, who adores the woman who lives down the street and allows her boyfriend to belittle him at every available opportunity and often stands monosyllabic at the back of a room... how on earth could it? With L'Humanité (1999), Dumont has attempted to create a stripped down, bare-naked form of ambient cinema, in which it is the little character details and passages of silence, broken only by shocking violence and mechanical sex, that go towards creating the story.

The ending of the film continues in this same vein and acts as a sort of shocking epiphany, in which every action and subtle line of dialog that has occurred during the epic running time is suddenly given a whole new meaning. Dumont has proved with this, his second feature, that he can reach beyond the tiresome kitchen sink theatrics of his first film, La Vie de Jesus (1997) and incorporate distancing naturalistic techniques (no camera movements, no artificial light, non-professional actors, etc) to create a film that is both horrendous and intoxicating in equal measures. Though enjoy is certainly the wrong word to use with a film this bleak and confrontational, those amongst you who admire the work of forward thinking European auteurs like the aforementioned Michael Haneke, Gaspar Noé and Lars von Trier will certainly admire and appreciate Dumont's shattering tour-de-force.

This film is brilliant... but you have to be patient

[strxer · 10/10 · 16 July 2002]

Let the film work its slow magic and you will see the beauty hiding beneath it. A great portrait of life in a sleepy town where nothing ever seems to happen. This superficiality masks a deep-seated irony that breaks to the surface with each passing moment. By film's end, you will realize how human these people really are, because their secrets are no different than ours, and their struggles reflect our struggles, despite the fact they live in a place where nothing ever happens. Other than living.

Who done it? The French

[MiloMindbender · 9/10 · 23 September 2001]

Most American crime/detective stories try to build suspense with effects, plot twists & music. This one relies entirely on the development of the characters & the mood of the events' settings. The result is a tale much creepier than anything Hollywood (including Cronenberg & David Lynch) could muster. This one isn't for the faint-hearted, not because of any gore or violence in the film, but rather because of its dark portrayal of human behavior.