One Shot is a series that seeks to find an essence of cinema history in one single image of a movie. At the finale of Bruno Dumont’s L’humanité (1999), an enervating investigation of both body and soul has finally led to the arrest of Pharaon’s friend Joseph (Philippe Tullier) for the rape and murder of a young girl. Pharaon (Emmanuel Schotté), the presiding police lieutenant, walks into the room to face an inconsolable Joseph. In an epiphanous mix of eros, philia, and agape, Pharaon grates his face against Joseph’s, caresses his short hair, kisses him fiercely on the mouth, and, with an exclamation of relief, pushes him back into the chair and leaves. A few scenes later, we see Pharaon sitting on the same chair, handcuffed.What Dumont undertakes in L'humanité, and indeed in most of his early films, is a visceral phenomenology of the human face.
- 11/2/2022
- MUBI
The most enigmatic competition title screened, Bruno Dumont's "Humanity", is a provocation, a movie that pushes naturalism so far that it devolves into epic mannerism. At once fascinating and painfully difficult to watch, Dumont's second feature is too skillful as filmmaking to dismiss, although it seems necessary to question the purpose of Dumont's formidable abilities when used to such questionable ends.
Dumont's 1997 "The Life of Jesus" was a blistering, uncompromising portrait of disaffected French youth. It revealed his startling talent and unique capacity for merging the tenets of neorealism with his stark, furious control of deeply uncomfortable material. With "Humanity", in trying to explain and understand the human capacity for the horrible and banal, Dumont moves between the extremes of human behavior, suggesting among other things the scant difference between sexual obsession and pathology.
Dumont's decision to extend every detail, action and movement to near-intolerable levels of scrutiny and analysis becomes utterly perverse. Indeed, Dumont holds every shot longer than he needs to in order to lay out either expositional or psychological detail. The camera's probing attention to vulnerability, weakness and even incompetence increases with virtually every scene.
The movie's formal beauty, along with Dumont's commanding assurance of framing and cutting, deserves attention. The opening moments showcase Dumont's uncommon skills. Shot in widescreen, the movie isolates a man in the distended landscape. Revealed in close-up, the man, distraught, runs through the fields and suddenly collapses, the camera almost fetishistically suspended above his face. Cut to the interior of the man's car, where it is discovered he is a police officer. Without warning, Dumont cuts to a horrifying close-up of a woman's mutilated genitalia, the camera slowly moving up her bruised corpse.
The man, Pharaon De Winter (Emmanuel Schotte), named after a prominent artist, seems fatally unprepared to handle the cool, emotionally remote demands of his profession. He's a recessive, painfully shy man who lives with his mother in northeastern France. As Pharaon struggles to piece together the forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony to track the killer, Dumont alternates this material with details from Pharaon's personal life. Here the material is no less disconcerting, given Pharaon is obsessively drawn to his neighbor, Domino (Severine Caneele), a young factory worker. As soon as we're introduced to Domino, she goes with her boyfriend, Joseph (Philippe Tullier), into her living room, where the two engage in spontaneous, graphic sex that Pharaon witnesses a few feet away.
Indeed, the camera makes no distinction, no editorial judgment, between the corpse of the rape victim and the furious, almost violent sexual encounters between Domino and Joseph. Each points out Pharaon's inadequacy, making explicit his awareness of his own dissatisfaction and incompleteness. As moviemaking, "Humanity" impresses on a formal level, but its deliberate distance, the cruelty displayed toward its protagonist, makes this a movie interesting to watch but impossible to engage on any emotional level.
One key scene, for instance, involves Pharaon traveling to England to interview two witnesses. Filmed atop an office building, the scene ends with Pharaon and his colleague witnessing from afar a man pummeling another man in a parking lot fight. Dumont makes explicit their voyeuristic interest and their distance from responsibility and involvement.
That summarizes the movie itself, underlining our own fear and revulsion at both the inexplicable behavior and the irrelevance of any attempt to make a difference in it.
Humanity
3B productions, Arte France CINEMA, CRRAV
CREDITS:
Producers:Jean Brehat, Rachid Bouchareb
Director/writer:Bruno Dumont
Cinematographer:Yves Cape
Production designer:Marc-Philippe Guerig
Costumes:Nathalie Raoul
Music:Richard Cuvillier
Editor:Guy Lecorne
CAST:
Pharaon de Winter:Emmanuel Schotte
Domino:Severine Caneele
Joseph:Philippe Tullier
Commandant:Ghislain Ghesquiere
Eliane:Ginette Allegre
Running time -- 148 minutes...
Dumont's 1997 "The Life of Jesus" was a blistering, uncompromising portrait of disaffected French youth. It revealed his startling talent and unique capacity for merging the tenets of neorealism with his stark, furious control of deeply uncomfortable material. With "Humanity", in trying to explain and understand the human capacity for the horrible and banal, Dumont moves between the extremes of human behavior, suggesting among other things the scant difference between sexual obsession and pathology.
Dumont's decision to extend every detail, action and movement to near-intolerable levels of scrutiny and analysis becomes utterly perverse. Indeed, Dumont holds every shot longer than he needs to in order to lay out either expositional or psychological detail. The camera's probing attention to vulnerability, weakness and even incompetence increases with virtually every scene.
The movie's formal beauty, along with Dumont's commanding assurance of framing and cutting, deserves attention. The opening moments showcase Dumont's uncommon skills. Shot in widescreen, the movie isolates a man in the distended landscape. Revealed in close-up, the man, distraught, runs through the fields and suddenly collapses, the camera almost fetishistically suspended above his face. Cut to the interior of the man's car, where it is discovered he is a police officer. Without warning, Dumont cuts to a horrifying close-up of a woman's mutilated genitalia, the camera slowly moving up her bruised corpse.
The man, Pharaon De Winter (Emmanuel Schotte), named after a prominent artist, seems fatally unprepared to handle the cool, emotionally remote demands of his profession. He's a recessive, painfully shy man who lives with his mother in northeastern France. As Pharaon struggles to piece together the forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony to track the killer, Dumont alternates this material with details from Pharaon's personal life. Here the material is no less disconcerting, given Pharaon is obsessively drawn to his neighbor, Domino (Severine Caneele), a young factory worker. As soon as we're introduced to Domino, she goes with her boyfriend, Joseph (Philippe Tullier), into her living room, where the two engage in spontaneous, graphic sex that Pharaon witnesses a few feet away.
Indeed, the camera makes no distinction, no editorial judgment, between the corpse of the rape victim and the furious, almost violent sexual encounters between Domino and Joseph. Each points out Pharaon's inadequacy, making explicit his awareness of his own dissatisfaction and incompleteness. As moviemaking, "Humanity" impresses on a formal level, but its deliberate distance, the cruelty displayed toward its protagonist, makes this a movie interesting to watch but impossible to engage on any emotional level.
One key scene, for instance, involves Pharaon traveling to England to interview two witnesses. Filmed atop an office building, the scene ends with Pharaon and his colleague witnessing from afar a man pummeling another man in a parking lot fight. Dumont makes explicit their voyeuristic interest and their distance from responsibility and involvement.
That summarizes the movie itself, underlining our own fear and revulsion at both the inexplicable behavior and the irrelevance of any attempt to make a difference in it.
Humanity
3B productions, Arte France CINEMA, CRRAV
CREDITS:
Producers:Jean Brehat, Rachid Bouchareb
Director/writer:Bruno Dumont
Cinematographer:Yves Cape
Production designer:Marc-Philippe Guerig
Costumes:Nathalie Raoul
Music:Richard Cuvillier
Editor:Guy Lecorne
CAST:
Pharaon de Winter:Emmanuel Schotte
Domino:Severine Caneele
Joseph:Philippe Tullier
Commandant:Ghislain Ghesquiere
Eliane:Ginette Allegre
Running time -- 148 minutes...
- 5/19/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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