museumofdave
This film is a challenging experience, and if you are used to the rhythms of television, to being stimulated by action and spectacle or you spend a good deal of time with video games, this film will drive you crazy; it's slow, sometimes maddeningly tedious, and the main character is far from heroic, in the usual sense.This is a film about people trapped by their own situation, by their experiences, by their environment, by their weaknesses--these are the folks you often see on the streets and wonder what their lives might be like; Director Dumont is not interested in entertaining you, but, I think, wants you to think about your own values, about how you react to other people.Insensitive viewers who are after the usual action popcorn movie, or with little empathetic response will probably dislike this film, as it is about the inner self, or the lack of it; moviegoers who want a challenge, a film unlike any other, might find this journey fascinating--but it does demand that you put aside your previous cinematic expectations.
tieman64
He races across the landscape, determined to climb a hill. He wants height, ascension, but is doomed to failure. Cut to close ups of feet, the man's once frenetic pace thwarted by a now muddy earth. He collapses, his palms and knees sinking into the mire. We watch for long moments as the man lays there, motionless in the mud. Gravity seems to be taking its toll, the earth's pull tugging at his bones, the mud consuming him, sucking him into the filth, swallowing him whole until...He pulls himself up. His name is Detective Pharaon de Winter, and he has a job to do.In this opening sequence, director Bruno Dumont sets up a dichotomy which runs throughout "Le Humanite": that of a character seeking to latch onto some modicum of humanity, of divinity, of spiritual uplift, whilst being continuously pulled back down by the material weight of the world. As we will see, this tug-of-war between the corporeal and the celestian is never resolved. Pharaon then walks up to his car, pulls himself in, starts the engine and...stops. He is not your ordinary police detective. Played by Emmanuel Schotté, a non professional actor with a brilliantly expressive face, Pharaon is a man profoundly wounded. Having lost his family years ago – an event which triggered an ontological shock – Pharaon navigates this film with the wide eyes of a sad child. He sees an "abomination" in everything. As such, Pharaon wants to run away. A little girl returning home from school has been raped, her dead body found. It is Pharaon's duty as a detective to appear at the crime scene. But how can he? Instead he starts his car radio and listens to some orchestral music, its divine sounds lulling him, like the hill, into a moment of security. His car radio then warbles. "I'm on my way," he unconvincingly tells the dispatcher. Already we know this is not your regular cop movie. Every gesture, every action, is a chore.The girl's corpse is horrific. Dumont's camera lingers on her bloody vagina, torn open, shredded and graphically shown. These images haunt the entire film, the film's cast weighed down, traumatised and sickened by what we ourselves have now seen. The girl's body is itself arranged to resemble "Étant donnés", a famous painting by Marcel Duchamp. Pharaon de Winter is also the name of a famous 19th century painter who resolved to show his audience the fourth dimension. What our hero sees is only suffering.In most cop movies, the corpse is "revived" by the hustle and the bustle of detectives, photographers and onlookers. But Dumont does the opposite. Not only does his tranquil crime scene suggest a total absence of life, but the police procedural that follows – despite the girl's murder ultimately (seemingly) being solved – suggests the impossibility for closure. This is the reality Pharaon already understands: solving the murder will not solve the problem of the girl's murder. Inhumanity is in humanity and humanity can not be solved.What then is the role of the police officer? To what ends does he exist? Pharaon not only seems incapable of believing in himself as a cop, but revokes his role as a man of action and/or pursuit in favour for passive observation. He is disposed against his job and what little he does is tinged with a sense of supreme hopelessness.For forty minutes the film radically ignores its murder plot. Instead, we watch as Pharaon goes about various daily routines. He talks with his neighbour Domino (her name suggesting dual identities), is shown to play the piano to drown out the "noise" of TV violence, and is shown to have contempt for Joseph, the lover of Domino, who Pharaon views as being a vulgar, child-hating, xenophobic, violent, brute. While Joseph embodies man's capacity for barbarity, a barbarity Pharon does not believe can be put right, his "nature" may itself only exist in Pharon's mind; a product of the cop's jealousies. Conversely, Joseph may be like most violence: in plain sight, obvious, but denied thanks to shared, mass denial. Regardless, Joseph's "normal" romantic relationship with Domino is shown to be base and animalistic, the film blurring the lines between love, sex, kindness and dark opportunism. Domino is herself a dehumanised factory worker (she makes paint – symbolically covering things up), futilely dreaming of striking against the unfair employers who habitually psychically rape her. When she offers her body to Pharaon, he rejects her outright. He will not be another abuser.Eventually Pharaon starts investigating the murder, but it's a slow affair. He spends most of his time gazing longingly at the heavens, dreaming of levitating or lovingly kissing/hugging criminals. He also tends to a vegetable allotment. With everyone in the film living in cramped, impersonal houses, this allotment is one of the few positive outlets in the film; a means of nurturing, creation and indeed action itself.When the criminal is eventually found, Pharaon kisses the man on his lips. A motherly gesture, Pharon wants to make things right, sooth the criminal, tease out some goodness, perhaps even take away the criminal's sins. But we're not even sure if the criminal is in fact the criminal. He exists in a more metaphysical space: he is everyone's neighbour.Last shot: Pharaon sitting in the criminal's chair, handcuffed. He wants to be in the man's shoes, wants to find some glimmer of humanity, some semblance of goodness. He then looks out a window and up into the heavens and smiles. He's recalling an earlier moment. The film's single moment of hope.9/10 - Like Robert Bresson, Dumont uses non-professional actors, and captures a kind of matter-of-fact transcendentality within our ordinary material world. For both directors, "spirit" infuses everything, the corporeal and the "spiritual" continually clash, and plot is told through elliptical, elusive moments.
I_John_Barrymore_I
This French oddity from second-time director Bruno Dumont is a masterpiece. Four minutes into the film I was ready to switch it off, but once I'd settled into the rhythm of the film I was transfixed. That took about 20 minutes, and once I'd finished the film I re-watched those first 20 minutes again.A policeman investigates the brutal murder of a young girl in a French town and that's pretty much it. It's even less than that in some respects. For example the girl is found in the opening minutes, but it's 50 minutes before any real investigation begins. Instead it focuses on the policeman (Pharaon) and his two friends (lovers Domino and Joseph). They go to the beach, to a restaurant, stand outside their houses having stunted conversations and generally wasting the day away. Pharaon goes for a bicycle ride and tends to his allotment. Essentially nothing happens. There are maybe four or five actual plot points altogether, and the rest is filled with chat of the "Hi, how are you?" variety, long shots of people walking or driving, or opening doors. The entire film follows a kind of rhythmic cycle that becomes hypnotic if you allow it.Which brings us to the actors. The DVD notes say they're all non-professionals. Not amateur actors, but real people who are acting for the first time. The actor who plays Joseph does reasonably well, but Domino is excellent (and it's an extremely brave performance for any actress).Emmanuel Schotte (as Pharaon) is amazing. It's simply one of the greatest performances I've ever seen. Imagine Travis Bickle with 99pc of the anger taken out. Then cross him with Forrest Gump (with non of Hanks' caricature or comedy). Cast a non-actor who looks like a cross between Clive Owen and Alfred Molina and you're somewhere close. He's a very unlikely cop. He's wide-eyed, innocent, and simple. He's slow and deliberate. Brief comments from other characters tell us his wife and child died two years ago, and he looks like a man still stunned, as if he'd just heard the news. This is never hinted at once; we don't ever see what he was like before, no one ever tells him "You've changed", but the audience gets the feeling this is a man suffering desperately from the pain of grief. Most of this is expressed in Schotte's eyes which are desperately sad.This low-key little film requires patience. Without Schotte's performance I don't think there'd be much of a film here. Be prepared for an extremely slow film, but one that's never boring. It will polarise opinion like few other films I've seen so I can't recommend it to everyone (and there are some very graphic sex scenes), but I thought it was amazing.
jsmithjamessmith
The main character, Pharaon, has suffered a loss of his wife and child in the pre-film past. He deals with with by just shutting down emotionally. Too long a movie, too much time spent on Pharaon's inexpressive face, too much "road time" (one of the banes of TV: filling time with moving cars, trains, etc.) Long scenes of him doing trivial - sometimes totally inexplicable, nonsensically trivial - actions with neither reason or emotion. His best friends Joseph and Domino are not much more, their relationship based on sex (this film perhaps gives new meaning to the phrase "gratuitous sex"); Domino and Pharaon's mother are the two characters who display some emotion, but not much. It is hard to tell with all the characters in this movie: is it indifferent acting, indifferent writing, or simply indifferent characters portrayed by good writing and good acting. Characters in this film talk very little to anyone; it's little wonder their emotionally isolated, which is all the more bizarre because it's clear they live in a neighborhood where the people are friendly and know each other.
