 | Being Human Starring: Robin Williams, Robert Carlyle, John Turturro, Grace Mahlaba, Anna Galiena, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jonathan Hyde, Hector Elizondo, Helen Miller, Charles Miller |
As Guido Mezzabotta says, "'Being Human'" is a fascinating failure." It is, however, a noble failure. A film of minimal gestures, recurring themes and symbols, giving nothing away nor hammering any points home, it attempts to chart the agonising journey of a human being from entry level to awareness. If anything it gives us too little information, leading to an inconclusiveness that will drive many viewers mad. In what could be described as a utilitarian view of reincarnation, director Bill Forsyth takes us through five lifetimes of a man whose recurring name is Hector. Robin Williams gives us one of his most understated roles, using few words and every possible nuance of expression as he plays this stumbling apprentice human in pre-Roman Celtic times, the Roman Era, the Crusades, the age of exploration, and the present. The film opens with a brief introduction: Hector and his estranged children at a beachside cottage in the modern day. He sits outside, unsure of himself and his relationship to the children. Inside, the children have similar feelings about the dad they haven't seen for four years. From here, and throughout the film, Theresa Russell's narration acts to link the episodes. The narration could have been tighter and perhaps less contemporary, but throughout the film there is an overlapping of ancient and contemporary that Forsyth must have intended. From the introductory beach scene, the film segues to the first episode in Hector's long journey. Here, cave dwelling Hector is confronted with the abduction of his wife and children by marauders from the sea (led by Robert Carlyle). At first, signalling a time of pre- or early consciousness, he is unable to comprehend the meaning of their loss. He feels impotent against the captors (who are by no means violent), hiding and observing them. Finally, as the boats leave with his family, Hector runs to the shore, shouting: "Mine! Mine!" Everyone is confused by his demands, as if they were being made for the first time ever. In the end Hector's entreaties are ineffectual; he is left alone. The second story finds Hector as the slave of foolish Lucinnius (Turturro) in Rome. Hector has a family, but they are in the far distant land of his capture and he realises that he will never see them again. In this episode, Hector is equipped with a cunning mind but is rendered ineffectual by his subordinate position. Lucinnius has suffered financial reversals and is ordered by Cyprian to either pay his debts or do the honourable thing: commit suicide. In his cowardly defence Lucinnius has lied to Cyprian and implicated Hector as the major culprit in his financial mismanagement. Therefore Hector must join him in death. Before the event, Hector cons Lucinnius into signing a paper giving him freedom from slavery. In a comical death scene, Lucinnius accidentally dies first, allowing Hector to escape to freedom with his slave lover, moving played by Grace Mahlaba. In the third episode Hector is returning from the Crusades to his family in Scotland, this time as a servant (but not as a slave) to a reluctant priest (D'Onofrio). The implication is that, from sheer circumstance, this priest will go on to play an important part in the development of European Christianity. Accompanying them is a widow, Beatrice, played superbly by Anna Galiena, on her way home to Italy. Hector summons the resolve missing in episode one, but gained in episode two, to break from the priest. He joins the widow for the next stage of the journey and they become lovers. Hector is enchanted by her bubbling personality and the strange language she speaks. In a stroke of genius, Forsyth eschewed subtitles, turning her speech into sheer music. (Is it Latin or a dialect of Italian? Is her joie de vivre compensation for the traumatic events, the death and burial of her husband, she has previously witnessed?) In one of the films many surreal moments the lovers encounter the corpse of a young boy leaning on a boulder as if he were idly observing them. As in so many moments in the film, this scene is inconclusive: we know nothing of the circumstances surrounding the boy's death, except that conflict is everywhere. At length the lovers reach the widow's idyllic village where her two children await her. She asks Hector to stay, but he gently refuses, aware somewhere in his soul of past losses. He resumes his journey home, leaving Beatrice alone and, for the first time, unsmiling. The fourth story, surreal and comical, finds Hector forced to deal with the lessons of previous lives, both learned and yet to be grasped. In this episode he backslides, but not altogether unconsciously. (Could it be an "interim" lifetime, a sabbatical, as it were? Perhaps he is just gathering information for the future and taking this lifetime off.) He is among the survivors of a Portuguese shipwreck (bound from Goa to Lisbon) off the desolate coast of North Africa. Water and food are scarce. The boat's captain, played with dithering authority by Hector Elizondo, decides to take those who are able on a trek into the unknown in search of civilisation. The sick and infirm are to remain on the beach until a rescue party arrives; they of course are being left to die. Hector, somewhat naive and cowardly, is torn between selfishness and compassion. His attempts to make amends to a woman passenger and former lover are met with gentle derision by her new suitor, Francisco (Jonathan Hyde), a world weary man who understands all too clearly his fate. The woman herself just turns her back on Hector. In a scene of grotesque surrealism Pier Paolo Pasolini would have been proud of, Hector and Francisco are chatting spectators to the hanging of two men caught for trying to steal the scant remaining provisions. Impossible to secure firmly in the sandy beach, the gallows, a wooden cross turned into a scaffold, tilts this way and that, turning the execution into a prolonged, horrifying farce. The entire scene is shot in close up to Hector and Francisco, with the victims flailing in the distance. The final episode returns to the modern day. Backtracking from the beachside cottage, we find Hector in New York as the unwitting partner of a shonky builder. In one of the apartment blocks his company has built, the entire toilet in one of the apartments has fallen through to the floor below with an ample woman astride it. His partner (Macy) eventually arrives on the scene, takes responsibility and releases bumbling Hector to his weekend with the children. It is this episode in which Forsyth attempts to reconcile the failures of Hector's long journey to self-understanding. Initially frightened of the encounter, he takes his children to the beach house owned by their stepfather. The first 24 hours appear to signal the usual disaster that has always awaited Hector's timorous, shallow failures of courage and responsibility. The scene that opens the film is repeated. Later, at a run-down amusement park, where the kids are obviously bored silly, Hector finally takes charge and engages them in a frank discussion. He reveals the reasons for his disappearance from their lives. We see that he always meant well, but that his fear of failure and rejection has caused him to turn away in defeat. His teenage daughter, somewhat incongruously, though perhaps she represents the wisdom of the muse or the White Goddess, takes on the role of his teacher. She advises him and reminds him that: "This is it. This is as good as it gets." He finally gives his son the hug the boy has always wanted but that Hector was afraid to give. The film concludes, in minimalist scenes devoid of sentimentality, on a note of reconciliation. We suspect it may take Hector a few more lives to finally get it, but that he is now firmly on the way. If "Being Human" had been all that it could or should have been, it might have become the greatest film of all time. Because it attempts to portray that which matters most: the overwhelming task of becoming a fully conscious human being. Like Hector, we pass through our lives in a state of near somnambulation. The film's sometimes slow moving dullness reflects the same in each of our lives. With few exceptions, none of us can claim to have led a life worthy of a box office smash. Indeed, the sum of our lives would amount to little more than a five minute vignette. Perhaps this is Forsyth's failure: he gives to each of Hector's lives too much attention. But a failure such as this is still worth more than 99 per cent of the "successes" that come out of Hollywood. The film falters no less than do most lives. Harold Hark |