Human Traffic
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| Human Traffic | |
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| Directed by | Justin Kerrigan |
| Produced by | Allan Niblo Emer Mccourt |
| Written by | Justin Kerrigan |
| Starring | John Simm Lorraine Pilkington Shaun Parkes Danny Dyer Nicola Reynolds |
| Distributed by | Irish Screen |
| Release date(s) | 1999 |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Human Traffic is a 1999 film directed and written by Justin Kerrigan. It is based around a group of friends living in Cardiff and their clubbing exploits over the course of one weekend, including sexual exploits and drug use. In a recent edition of UK gay lifestyle magazine Attitude, actor Danny Dyer spoke about the film being based on the withdrawn 1990 film Loved Up F**ked Up mentioning that the original film's drug and sexual content forced the feature to be withdrawn.
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[edit] Headline text
[edit] Synopsis
Jip (John Simm) lives in Cardiff, works at a clothes shop and is sexually paranoid. He lives for the weekends, going out with his friends and getting drugged up. The film focuses on one such weekend; Jip, Koop, Nina (Koop's girlfriend), Lulu and Moff go out to a club in Cardiff on Friday night with devious intentions. Throughout the course of the film, Lulu and Jip eventually get together and have sex; Moff has a discussion with a fellow partygoer about how Star Wars is a drug fantasy, and the fact that Yoda was always stoned (hence the reason he had the power and spoke back to front) and Koop and Nina argue over her flirtatious behaviour. The film ends with Jip and Lulu dancing in the street in a parody of 'typical' love story films.
The main theme of the film is presented as alienation which is used to explain why some of the main characters should risk walking the line between sanity and insanity in taking drugs. The family troubles of Jip, Koop and Moff are a strong cause for feelings of alienation. Jip's mother is a prostitute, and it is only at the end of the film when he has overcome his sexual paranoia (caused by former lovers he has had in the past) that he respects his mother as a woman and his mother, rather than just seeing her as a prostitute. Koop's father has been put in a home 'with all the other headcases' as after his wife left him, Koop's father invented himself an alternate reality in which 'our side' is constantly fighting 'their side'. Koop can no longer converse with his father about anything other than his fantasy world, and it is perhaps this experience that leads him to berate Nina later in the film. Moff still lives with his family and his father is a Police Officer (who was just recently promoted to superintendent). However, his theme is that he has no way of communicating with his family. At the end, Moff storms out shouting "who are you people?!". Such a lack of communication is fundamental to all three families represented here - Jip feels he cannot love his mother because of her profession, Koop cannot communicate with his mentally disabled father and Moff has grown up with people who have talked at him all his life (as represented by his using a remote control to fast forward and rewind their speech) and who have never talked with him.
Alienation is also expressed in terms of Jip's and Nina's employment. Jip works at a clothing retail outlet and is a 'slave to the wage'. He feels no passion for his work and feels forced into moral degradation by the need to earn money. In one scene used to demonstrate Jip's feelings for such a system he is shown being raped by his boss whilst having his mouth covered with a £20 note. Nina has similar misgivings about her job at a fast-food restaurant where all the employees are shown to move as if robots. She is harassed by her literally slimy boss and quits that day before going clubbing.
Thus the drug taking of the ensuing weekend is represented as the extreme high that can overcome and make one forget one's unpleasant life, as well as letting the characters feel more intimate with each other (thanks to ecstasy) than they ever could as the alienated beings they are the rest of the week.
Some of these problems are resolved. Jip manages to make love to Lulu, overcoming his sexual paranoia, and in so doing being able to make up with his mother. Moff's Star Wars conversation made him feel connected with his fellow partygoer; however, even whilst he is having this conversation the comedown hits and he realises that he has said nothing and done nothing. The next day, he is distrustful of his friends, Jip et al, and decides that he can no longer carry on. He has been taking 'too much for too long'. One of the last scenes shows various cityscapes of Cardiff before slowly focusing on Moff walking alone to nowhere in particular having just stormed out of his house. Moff is the human traffic who has been left out by society; alienated by his family and his lack of job prospects all he has are his friends who, reluctantly support his decision to quit. Their reluctance of course stems from their own acknowledgment that they cannot continue this lifestyle forever either.
Jip concludes his narration by saying "We're all fucked up in our own way, y'know, but we're all doing it together. We're freestylin' on the buckle wheel of life, trapped in a world of internal dialogue. Like Bill Hicks said: 'It's an insane world, but I'm proud to be part of it.'"
[edit] Soundtrack
An important part of this film is the soundtrack; which includes some of the most famous dance music producers of the 1990s. These include CJ Bolland, Fatboy Slim, Orbital, Aphrodite, Primal Scream and Brainbug.
[edit] Significance within drug culture
Many panned the film as having little or no plot when it was released, however it has become a cult hit in the rave scene. Many see it as having a huge similarity to their own lives. Although there is significant dialogue about drug use contained in the film (specifically MDMA(Ecstasy), marijuana, and one sarcastic rant about heroin use), there is barely any visual representation of actual drug use in the film. The characters are never shown actually ingesting Ecstasy tablets. There are a few small scenes showing secondary characters smoking what is implied to be marijuana. The only drug use by main characters shown is a scene where Jip and Koop are having a conversation at a house party and they are seen cutting up a line of a non-specific white powder. They are never actually shown snorting it, but nonchalantly rub it into their gums during a discussion, suggesting it is amphetamine rather than cocaine. This is a marked difference in comparison to most movies about drug use and/or raves and such movies almost always show the main characters ingesting drugs on-screen.
[edit] Quotes
- Jip [getting ready for party]: "All that exists now is clubs, drugs, pubs and parties. I've got forty eight hours off from the world, man. I'm gonna blow steam out of my head like a screaming kettle. I'm gonna talk codshit to strangers all night. I'm gonna lose the plot on the dancefloor, the free radicals inside me are freaking man! Tonight I'm Jip Travolta, I'm Peter Popper, I'm going to Never Never Land with my chosen family, man. We're going to get more spaced out than Neil Armstrong ever did. Anything could happen tonight, you know? This could be the best night of my life! I've got seventy three quid in my backburner. I'm gonna wax the lot, man. The milky bars are on me! Yeah!"
- Jip and Moff [talking on phone]: "Nice one Bruva !!!"
- Lulu: "Take me to a place where the drugs are free, the clubs have no gravity and every shag guarantees an orgasm! "
- Jip: "I fucking hate this job man. We spend nine hours a day, five days a week incarcerated in this wanky fucking store, having to act like C-3PO to any wanker who wants to condescend to us. We have to brown nose the customers, then we get abused by some... mini fucking Hitler who just gives us stick all day. "
- Koop to hip-hop junkie: "If we had anymore 'ardcore we'd get 'rrested, d'ya know wha' I mean?" and "This track is from the itchytriggerfingerniggaz"
- Nina to Lulu [singing] "How biiiig was his diiiick?"
[edit] Trivia
- There is another cut of this film called Human Traffic Remixed. According to The Guardian, this was the work of producer Allan Niblo, and was done without the prior knowledge or subsequent approval of director Justin Kerrigan. The Remixed version was released on DVD in the UK and features new scenes, new CGI effects, and new tracks, but also omits some footage from the original version. In particular, Niblo removed from the titles all shots of the 1994 anti-Criminal Justice and Public Order Act demonstration and subsequent riot, which Kerrigan had included as an implicit political statement.
- The US version was edited to remove certain cultural references that it was felt Stateside audiences would be unable to identify with. Notable amongst the changes was the removal of the "Summer of Love", late 80s/early 90s flashback sequence - complete with dummies, glowsticks, et al. Apparently this - and other refences - were thought to have been confusing for American youths whose similar "old school rave" period came rather more recently. For example: When Jip is introducing Lulu - he says that he has "recently become clubbing partners" where the UK version he says "recently become dropping partners".
- When Jip first picks up Koop in his car, you hear the radio broadcast of BBC's Radio One. The MC is Pete Tong, who is the movie's Music Supervisor. Pete Tong actually does have a weekly radio show on Radio One.
