Humans, The (Stephen Karam, 2021) Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer
Seeing this was a play written by the same man who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, I was looking out for theatricality, in the sense of the set looking like a stage set with actors in the kinds of compositions found on a proscenium arch stage. Nuh. Nothing remotely like that. On the contrary, this is a very cinematic film, in that it has lots of shots and camera angles chosen for their striking visuality.
Peter Bradshaw:
In theory, it’s about a family gathering for a Thanksgiving lunch, the sort of event that can usually be expected to bring about the phased disclosure of all the characters’ individual secrets and micro-tragedies. This feels more serious. These people look like the last group of humans left alive after some apocalyptic catastrophe, the remnants of homo sapiens being watched and examined at a distance by aliens. The grimly damp and undecorated duplex in which they have assembled could almost be a mass hallucination, triggered by a trauma worse than anything they’re talking about. The Guardian.
Keith Watson:
Karam orchestrates the highs and lows of a family reunion with Chekhovian subtlety, allowing the suppressed sorrow of the Blake family to seep out through quiet conversations and telling moments rather than exploding in bursts of O’Neillian speechifying. ... Karam ensures that the focus remains on his characters and their relationships, rather than on any grand themes. The cast ... deliver finely shaded performances that never lapse into the sort of showy emotiveness that so frequently plagues stage-to-screen adaptations. Slant.
Brian Tallerico:
At one point, Erik [Richard Jenkins} says “Don’t you think it should cost less to be alive?” That’s the theme that tries to hold The Humans together—the seemingly increasing cost of day-to-day existence. Karam adds loud pipes and cracks in the ceiling to increase the sense that something is just wrong. Everywhere. I just kept hoping that the ominous sense of drama led somewhere more interesting than an acting exercise that I wished I had seen on a stage.
Peter Bradshaw:
Karam and his cinematographer Lol Crawley will often record their conversations at a distance, as if they have these people under surveillance. Often, the camera will home in on the damp patches bubbling and cracking the walls, or the clanking old pipes along which weird echoey sounds travel. Sometimes a conversation will take place behind a fiercely detailed closeup of a pigeon feather on a window sill, which has been torn off by one of the anti-vermin spikes. The impending sense of doom and the uncanny takes The Humans beyond miserablism. Are these people sleepwalkers? Or is this all a dream or memory that one of them is having? Very real issues are suffused with an oppressive, unearthly, compelling unreality. The Guardian.
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IMDb page.
reviews | Garry Gillard | New: 16 March, 2022 | Now: 16 April, 2022