Asahi Shimbun News Service
March 10, 2002
Human nature is a terrible thing. We do nasty things on such a regular basis that we've had to make laws to protect ourselves from man's darker urges. This is news to nobody.
But as screenwriter-producer Charlie Kaufman illustrates in his film "Human Nature," stuff happens. After all, we're only human.
This is the feature film debut by France's Michel Gondry-who started out making his own band's videos and gave Bjork's career a huge boost with the 1993 video "Human Behaviour." Gondry's clever tricks have also done much for Beck, the Rolling Stones and the Chemical Brothers on the small screen. The other big name connected with this film is Spike Jonze, who's a co-producer.
"Human Nature" opens with a murder, witnessed by a pair of shocked white mice. Soon we see Nathan (Tim Robbins) entering a white room in the afterlife, a bullet hole in his forehead. The former animal behavior expert tells us it's his own fault he's dead.
Down among the living, a shaggy-haired man in a suit, who was raised as a pygmy chimp, testifies before Congress about what he thinks of mankind.
Meanwhile, Lila (Patricia Arquette), who was Nathan's lover, is telling three bored detectives the events leading up to the murder.
Forced by fate to live alone in the forest, Lila becomes a pro-animal rights naturalist, publishing tomes called "F... Humanity" and trying to ignore her hormonal urges. Eventually, though, she returns to the city and falls in love with Nathan, who has spent his career trying to teach white mice table manners and hiding the fact that he has a small penis.
Out in the woods, this needy pair stumble across a naked wild man (Rhys Ifans, of 1999's "Notting Hill"). Nathan wants to civilize him, but Lila argues that they should instead preserve his simian integrity.
Nathan wins out. Back at the lab, Nathan's French ingenue assistant names him Puff.
Also, one character has a problem that surely must have challenged Japan's hair-nude censors.
Kaufman's flashback story line gradually reveals whodunit, while showing us all our human flaws one by one in a hilarious parade of sex, violence and betrayal; lies, hatred and revenge. We've seen it before both on the screen and in the headlines, but never quite so divertingly. Mankind, This Is Your Life.
But unlike in Kaufman's "Being John Malkovich" (1999), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, the surprises are fewer-likely because only one man really knows what it's like to be John Malkovich, while we all have an idea of what it means to be human. The natural man theme is as old as Adam, but the actors here, as in "BJM," manage to keep a straight face, even as things spin out into MTV scenarios.
Still, Kaufman offers a sharp, funny commentary on the excesses of civilization, although no answer to the problem. Gondry's seamless computer effects and pop-art colors add a zesty surreal feeling: The CG-enhanced white mice learn which fork to choose while eating salad at a miniature 1950s dinette set. Lila's twittering musical romp through nature, au naturel, is more like a video for a remake of Walt Disney's "Snow White."
And flashbacks of Nathan's childhood, with his mother (a tight-lipped Mary Kay Place) telling him, "Never wallow in the filth of instinct," are presented in cropped-frame shots that look like old home movies. Kaufman also quotes old songs just for the fun of it: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
The film, screened at last year's Cannes Film Festival and later at the Tokyo International Film Festival, shows what filmmakers weaned on pop culture and commercials (Gondry's also famous for his Nike, Levi's and Gap TV ads) can do. They sure can entertain; let's hope they tell us something new.
(Source)