The Humans. (15.)
Directed by Stephen Karam.
Starring Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Steven Yeun, Beanie Feldstein, Jayne Houdyshell and June Squibb. In cinemas or streaming at Curzon Home Cinema. 108 mins.
Nothing spells sheer hell to me quite as comprehensively as “based on an award-winning Broadway play," especially when the writer of the play is in charge of the adaptation. And this isn’t just any old Broadway play, but a great state-of-the-nation piece, this generation’s deafovasaleman in which an ordinary family gather together for Thanksgiving and jaw their way through all the major social issues post 9/11. The thrill of the big screen version of The Humans is that its author seems to share my disdain: Karam’s approach to adapting his own play is the opposite of reverence. It’s brutal, almost dismissive, much like abandoning the family dog miles from home in unfamiliar surroundings and seeing if it can find its way home.
Karam’s solution to adapting a stage masterpiece to the big screen is unexpected but inspired – he treats it like a horror film. The opening credits are accompanied by a montage of shots of the slashes of light that is the view of the sky as seen from the back of an apartment block hemmed in on all sides by other apartment blocks. It’s a striking visual (resembles the bat logo in Dark Knight posters) but then we move into the empty, unfurnished two-storey apartment which the youngest daughter (Feldstein) and her boyfriend (Yuen) have moved into. Full of mould and mottled paintwork it is as oppressive and overbearing a presence as Deneuve's London flat in Repulsion. In this hostile location, the cast attempt to deliver the play but are interrupted by the mysterious banging noises from the old Chinese lady upstairs or the sound from the pipes.
Karam mostly just leaves them to get on with it. His staging and camerawork contrives to keep the theatrics at a distance. Often his camera will hang back and watch on from afar. Shooting the back of the performer's head as they deliver their lines is inherently pretentious but works here. The camera moves are bold; at one point, it pulls in from a position far outside the circle of performers to a close up on someone’s face. This should be a very showy, look-at-me piece of direction but it’s executed so subtly you barely notice it.
The play is your standard group get together in which a seemingly happy surface is slowly pulled back to reveal darker truth – just like every other play ever written. The film overwhelms the play. It shows up the mechanics of the writing but in such a way that you appreciate the performers that bit more. They are are all top-notch, though Jenkins stands out as the faltering patriarch.
And as an unflinching look at the reality of life in the USA, it is more honest than most, if only because most of the cast are overweight and poor. Indeed, with its selection of fat ladies and thin men it's like a Donald McGill seaside postcard from the set of Eraserhead.
Directed by Stephen Karam.
Starring Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Steven Yeun, Beanie Feldstein, Jayne Houdyshell and June Squibb. In cinemas or streaming at Curzon Home Cinema. 108 mins.
Nothing spells sheer hell to me quite as comprehensively as “based on an award-winning Broadway play," especially when the writer of the play is in charge of the adaptation. And this isn’t just any old Broadway play, but a great state-of-the-nation piece, this generation’s deafovasaleman in which an ordinary family gather together for Thanksgiving and jaw their way through all the major social issues post 9/11. The thrill of the big screen version of The Humans is that its author seems to share my disdain: Karam’s approach to adapting his own play is the opposite of reverence. It’s brutal, almost dismissive, much like abandoning the family dog miles from home in unfamiliar surroundings and seeing if it can find its way home.
Karam’s solution to adapting a stage masterpiece to the big screen is unexpected but inspired – he treats it like a horror film. The opening credits are accompanied by a montage of shots of the slashes of light that is the view of the sky as seen from the back of an apartment block hemmed in on all sides by other apartment blocks. It’s a striking visual (resembles the bat logo in Dark Knight posters) but then we move into the empty, unfurnished two-storey apartment which the youngest daughter (Feldstein) and her boyfriend (Yuen) have moved into. Full of mould and mottled paintwork it is as oppressive and overbearing a presence as Deneuve's London flat in Repulsion. In this hostile location, the cast attempt to deliver the play but are interrupted by the mysterious banging noises from the old Chinese lady upstairs or the sound from the pipes.
Karam mostly just leaves them to get on with it. His staging and camerawork contrives to keep the theatrics at a distance. Often his camera will hang back and watch on from afar. Shooting the back of the performer's head as they deliver their lines is inherently pretentious but works here. The camera moves are bold; at one point, it pulls in from a position far outside the circle of performers to a close up on someone’s face. This should be a very showy, look-at-me piece of direction but it’s executed so subtly you barely notice it.
The play is your standard group get together in which a seemingly happy surface is slowly pulled back to reveal darker truth – just like every other play ever written. The film overwhelms the play. It shows up the mechanics of the writing but in such a way that you appreciate the performers that bit more. They are are all top-notch, though Jenkins stands out as the faltering patriarch.
And as an unflinching look at the reality of life in the USA, it is more honest than most, if only because most of the cast are overweight and poor. Indeed, with its selection of fat ladies and thin men it's like a Donald McGill seaside postcard from the set of Eraserhead.
