Human Nature (film)

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Human Nature
Directed by Michel Gondry
Produced by Anthony Bregman
Ted Hope
Spike Jonze
Charlie Kaufman
Written by Charlie Kaufman
Starring Tim Robbins
Patricia Arquette
Rhys Ifans
Miranda Otto
Rosie Perez
Music by Graeme Revell
Cinematography Tim Maurice-Jones
Editing by Russell Icke
Studio StudioCanal
Good Machine
Distributed by Fine Line Features (U.S.)
Bac Films (France)
Release dates
  • May 18, 2001 (2001-05-18) (Cannes)
  • September 12, 2001 (2001-09-12) (France)
  • April 12, 2002 (2002-04-12) (United States)
Running time 96 minutes
Country United States
France[1]
Language English
Box office $1,574,660[2][3]

Human Nature is a 2001 American-French comedy-drama film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry. The film stars Tim Robbins, Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto and Patricia Arquette. It was screened out of competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.[4]

Plot summary

Most of the movie is told as flashback: Puff (Rhys Ifans) testifies to Congress, Lila Jute (Patricia Arquette) tells her story to the police, while a dead Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins) addresses an unseen audience in the netherworld.

Lila is a woman with a rare hormonal imbalance which causes thick hair to grow all over her body. During her 20s, Lila decides to leave society and live within nature where she feels free to exist comfortably in her natural state. She writes a successful book about her naked, savage, happy, and free life in the woods embracing nature. Then, at age 30, strong sexual desire causes her to return to civilization and have her hair removed in order to find a partner.

The partner she finds is Dr. Nathan Bronfman, a psychologist researching the possibility of teaching table manners to mice. Lila and Nathan go hiking in the woods one day. Lila sights a naked man in the woods who has believed himself to be an ape his entire life. Lila discards her clothes and chases him until he's cornered on a tree branch. The man falls off the branch and fall unconscious as Nathan comes along. Nathan brings this man to his lab where the man is named Puff. This name is after his French research assistant, Gabrielle's (Miranda Otto) childhood dog. We discover later from her phone call to an unknown person that she is actually an American with a fake French accent. First with the help of Gabrielle and later with Lila’s help, Nathan performs extensive manner training on Puff, so that he can speak and go through the motions of appreciating high culture, though he still has difficulty controlling sexual urges.

To demonstrate his success, Nathan takes Puff on tour. Puff secretly drinks heavily and patronizes prostitutes. Meanwhile, Nathan and Lila's relationship deteriorates and Nathan has an affair with Gabrielle. Eventually Lila decides to take Puff back into the forest to undo his manner training and return him to his natural state.

Lila and Puff live naked in the woods together until Nathan finds them one day and Puff kills Nathan. Lila turns herself in as the murderer and asks Puff to testify on the waywardness of humanity before he returns to his home in the forest.

After the reporters and spectators leave, Puff comes back out of the forest and gets into a car with Gabrielle. They both drive off to get food (she still speaks with a French accent).

At the end of the movie, there is a philosophical passage read while the credits appear. It is an excerpt of William of Ockham from Opera Theologica in which Ockham explains his theory of intuitive cognition.[5] "Intuitive cognition is such that when some things are cognized, of which one inheres in the other, or one is spatially distant from the other, or exists in some relation to the other, immediately in virtue of that non-propositional cognition of those things, it is known if the thing inheres or does not inhere, if it is spatially distant or not, and the same for other true contingent propositions, unless that cognition is flawed or there is some impediment. [Opera Theologica I, p. 31]"

Cast

Visual style

Several shots in Human Nature recreate scenes from the Björk music video "Human Behaviour" (1993), also directed by Michel Gondry.

Cultural references

The film's structure closely follows the 1917 story A Report To An Academy, by the author Franz Kafka, in which an ape addresses a scientific audience, explaining the difficulties he encountered while becoming a man.

Production

Steven Soderbergh was first interested in directing Charlie Kaufman's script back in late 1996, when Kaufman was still trying to get Being John Malkovich produced. Soderbergh's considerations for casting were for David Hyde Pierce in the role of Nathan Bronfman, Chris Kattan in the role of Puff (likely due to his character Mr. Peepers on Saturday Night Live at the time), and Marisa Tomei in the role of Lila Jute. He was about to go into pre-production when he was offered Out of Sight and after much deliberation he left the project.

Critical reception

Human Nature was met with mixed reviews, earning a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes movie review aggregator site.[6] Roger Ebert, in a three-star (out of a possible four) review, lauded the film's "screwball charm".[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Human Nature". British Film Institute. London. Retrieved October 16, 2012. 
  2. ↑ "Human Nature (2002)". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 17 December 2013. 
  3. ↑ "Human Nature (2002) - International Box Office Results". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 17 December 2013. 
  4. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: Human Nature". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-10-24. 
  5. ↑ Opera Theologica p.31
  6. ↑ "Human Nature". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2012-10-24. 
  7. ↑ "Human Nature :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-27. 

External links

Films directed by Michel Gondry
Charlie Kaufman filmography
Directed and written
Written only
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