L'Humanité (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | L'Humanité |
| Original title | L'humanité |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1999 |
| length | 148 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Bruno Dumont |
| script | Bruno Dumont |
| production |
Rachid Bouchareb Jean Bréhat |
| music | William Christie |
| camera | Yves Cape |
| cut | Guy Lecorne |
| occupation | |
| |
L'Humanité , even humanity , one's Arthouse - Drama of the French auteur Bruno Dumont .
action
A sex crime takes place in a small French town not far from Lille - eleven-year-old Nadège is raped and murdered on her way to school. The local police are starting an investigation. One of the investigating police officers is Pharaon De Winter, grandson of the famous painter of the same name. He lives with his mother in a row house. Two years ago he lost his wife and young child. His social contacts are limited to the factory worker Domino and the bus driver Joseph, who are a couple and live on the same street as Pharaon. Pharaon seems interested in dominoes, but does not get out of his passive role. He occasionally goes on excursions with the couple, the three of them visit a fort by the sea and go out to eat.
Pharaon is also cautious professionally, his superior sees him as an unsuccessful investigator. The investigation into the sex murder is going slowly, the investigators are receiving pressure from Lille and Paris. Nadège's classmates and potential suspects are questioned, but one clue remains vague. Pharaon follows the children's way to school and has the school bus driver Joseph drop them off not far from the crime scene. The sight of the crime scene makes him desperate and he runs away screaming. A survey of passengers on a train traveling not far from the crime scene did not produce any results. The investigation is made more difficult as the local factory workers decide to go on strike. Since Pharaon issued a reprimand to strikers, including Domino, in front of the town hall, the relationship between Pharaon and Domino was briefly disrupted. Domino offers himself to Pharaon shortly afterwards, but he leaves her without a word. She apologizes for her behavior, Pharaoh's mother asks her to leave her son alone. Pharaon later shows tenderness towards the flowers in his allotment garden.
The strike ended after a short time. Pharaon searches in vain for the perpetrator in a psychiatric facility and is desperate at the sight of the patient. The facility nurse hugs him. A little later, the case is taken over by the Lille police. Shortly afterwards the perpetrator can be arrested: it is Joseph who is crying in the police station. Pharaon comforts him and finally kisses him deeply. He picks flowers in his garden and goes to Domino, who is also crying and is comforted by Pharaon. She calms down in his arms. Shortly afterwards, Pharaon is shown in handcuffs in the police station. He smiles.
production
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L'Humanité was the second film directed by Bruno Dumont after The Life of Jesus . The shooting took place in Dumont's birthplace Bailleul . The houses of Pharaon and Domino are on Rue de Saint-Amand, not far from Saint-Amand Church. The scenes by the sea and in the fort were filmed in Ambleteuse and in Fort Mahon, respectively. The costumes created Nathalie Raoul , the Filmbauten come from Marc-Philippe Guerig . The painter Pharaon de Winter (1849–1924), present in the film as the main character's great-grandfather, actually existed and was born in Bailleul.
L'Humanité had its premiere on May 17, 1999 at the Cannes International Film Festival . The film ran at the Munich Film Festival in early July 1999 and was shown in German cinemas from March 30, 2000. The WDR showed the film on May 10, 2000 for the first time on German television, where it was subtitled.
stylistics
L'Humanité consistently relies on a strict style: the film has a very low cut frequency and therefore scenes that are longer than average. The camera remains extremely static - there are no tracking shots and only a few pans, the action is filmed almost entirely from medium and long shots. Since hardly any music is used, only the background noise can be heard, humanity appears very naturalistic.
As in most of Dumont's works, the director relies on amateur actors who have been instructed not to act, but simply to act as themselves. In particular, the main actor Emmanuel Schotté reveals hardly anything about the emotions of Pharaon De Winter with his neutral facial expressions. Since there are very few dialogues, especially in view of the above-average running time, the viewer hardly learns anything about the protagonists in this way.
Despite the realistic staging, Dumont added two stylistic inconsistencies - in one scene of the film that shows De Winter in his garden, De Winter suddenly floats in the air for a few seconds. In the last scene of the film, after a cut, the arrested killer is no longer sitting, but De Winter is handcuffed on a chair in the police station.
Reviews
The film magazine Cinema described L'Humanité as an “unbearable film” and stated that “after two and a half hours of pessimistic and lengthy social drama [...] depressed, one [leaves] the cinema”. "Dumont is so insistent on the grandiosity of his pictures that they turn into the ridiculous", stated the Saarbrücker Zeitung . The Lausitzer Rundschau torn down the film: “Its brittle headbirth 'L'Humanité' is an imposition in Cinemascope. A dreary film about the dreary love life of three dreary characters. All of this embedded in an equally simple-minded criminal case in the province. "
The film manages “with a minimum of plot and dialogue because it relies entirely on the power of the carefully composed images. Therein lies its solitary size, but also its unreasonableness, which demands patience from the viewer and the will for creative interpretation ”, judged the film-dienst . The world stated that Dumont's film was “a tremendous provocation of our ingrained viewing habits”. He persists in shots "with a persistence that makes his film almost unbearable (and desperate makes the viewer count the length of the shot). […] However, hardly ever has a film made the atmosphere of a place and a situation so palpable - as you can feel every muscle after sitting motionless on a wicker chair for an hour. "
Awards
At the 1999 Cannes International Film Festival, L'Humanité won the Grand Jury Prize . The amateur actors Emmanuel Schotté and Séverine Caneele also received the festival's actor awards, which led to controversy. Why they "received the drama award for their one-dimensional performance remains the secret of Cronenberg and Co," wrote the Lausitzer Rundschau . The jury's decision was "an affront to everyone who loves acting," wrote Die Zeit . L'Humanité also competed for the Golden Palm . Yves Cape was nominated for a European Film Award for Best Cinematography in 1999.
Web links
- L'Humanité in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Essay on Bruno Dumont's Humanity and Gaspar Noé's Irreversible
Individual evidence
- ↑ Margret Schilling: Humanity . cinema.de, accessed on May 22, 2015
- ↑ Peter Hornung: Films, do you never, never, never want to end? In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , May 21, 1999.
- ^ A b Dieter Oßwald: The defiant palms of Cannes . In: Lausitzer Rundschau , May 25, 1999.
- ↑ L'Humanité. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ^ Hanns-Georg Rodek: The precious seconds of the cinema . In: Die Welt , May 20, 1999, p. 14.
- ↑ Christiane Peitz: Great distress and cloudy light . In: Die Zeit , May 27, 1999.