Human Nature (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio Menu Audio Featurette-5:58 Theatrical Trailer-1:10 Interviews-Cast & Crew-5
Rating
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	92:10 (Case: 96)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Michel Gondry
Studio Distributor	Magna Home Entertainment	Starring	Tim Robbins Patricia Arquette Rhys Ifans Miranda Otto Rosie Perez
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	?	Music	Graeme Revell

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Sometimes they just try too hard. Or maybe they are simply afraid? Whatever the reason, sometimes they go too far, and the result is a mess.

    Who are they? Well, in this case it's scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry. And how have they gone too far? Well, Human Nature could have been a very funny comedy, or it could have been biting satire, or an interesting commentary on society and child-rearing, or maybe something else. But they don't seem to have decided what they were trying to do, and ended up with something that is just a disappointment. More than anything, I blame the director — he is the one who is responsible for holding the film to a coherent vision. This is his first feature film, but other directors have made excellent films at their first attempt. It is not promising when you hear him open his interview by describing this film as a "hilarious sad comedy".

    This film has some of the classic signs of "trying too hard". The first, and most telling, is that all the main characters are quirky and unusual. In a successful film you only need one quirky character (well, maybe a pair) — you need straight characters for balance and context. In this film our main characters are:

• Nathan (Tim Robbins) — he had an extremely strait-laced upbringing, being punished heavily for the slightest transgression of manners. He is engaged in a project to teach table manners to mice, because he believes that this will lead to peace on Earth
• Lila (Patricia Arquette) — she suffers from an extremely rare condition that causes hair to grow all over her body, something of which she is terribly ashamed. She retreats from humanity and lives in the wilderness, then makes a living writing books about it.
• Puff (Rhys Ifans) — he was raised by his somewhat-deranged father as an ape in the wilderness. He was living peacefully in the wilderness until...

    As if it wasn't enough to have quirky central characters, we have an unusual structure to the story. It opens with a dead body, which we rapidly discover is Nathan's. Then we hear Lila and Puff talking about the death, followed by comments from Nathan. Nathan is shown in a pure white room, with a bullet-hole in his head. Then we get the rest of the story, told in flashbacks.

    We see Lila talk Nathan into a hike in the wilderness (which seems awfully close to wherever they live). During that hike, she spots a human form in the underbrush, and charges off after it, shedding clothes as she goes (huh?). She catches up with him. He gets knocked out by mischance. Nathan takes advantage of this, and sees it as his big chance: he will teach manners to this feral human, and become famous. He proceeds to do this, using lots of electric shocks. Nathan's lab assistant, Gabrielle (Miranda Otto), names him Puff.

    As if the story isn't complicated enough, we get a variety of love triangles, betrayal, and counter-betrayal. Not to mention the shooting that was given away in the opening scenes...

    The most vile part of this film comes when Nathan feels it necessary to train Puff to restrain his sexual urges — this reminded me of Clockwork Orange, but with none of that film's mastery. The scenes where Puff is paraded before bunches of academics are reminiscent of The Elephant Man (again, with none of that film's virtues).

    The four actors I've mentioned all turn in quite reasonable performances (Patricia Arquette isn't as good as the rest, but she gets the worst lines, and she's made to sing badly), but they can't rescue the disaster that is the script from the lack of direction. With a stronger director this might have been a great film, maybe. A sad waste.

    In case you are wondering, no, the MA rating is not for nudity, but rather for the fairly strong coarse language that's used at times.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. As far as I can tell, the intended aspect ratio was 1.85:1, so 1.78:1 is quite close.

    The image is reasonably sharp, and fairly clear. Shadow detail is quite decent, but not up to the highest standard. Film grain is no problem, and neither is low-level noise.

    Colour is well-rendered, and there are no obvious colour artefacts.

    There are a few tiny film artefacts, but nothing worth noting down. There is a little aliasing on a progressive system, but rather more on a non-progressive one. There are traces of moiré, but it's never troubling. There are traces of shimmer on backgrounds, but no other MPEG artefacts.

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered, hence there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is only provided in English, both in Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448kbps, and in 2.0 at 224kbps. I only listened to the English 5.1.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible at all times. There are no visible slips in audio sync.

    This film gets a Graeme Revell soundtrack. Not one of his best, but perfectly serviceable. I could have done without the "Lila" songs, but we can't blame Graeme Revell for them; their music was written by Jean-Michel Bernard.

    The surrounds are not heavily used, but they do function to deepen the soundstage. The subwoofer is not heavily called upon, but this film is rather short on earthquakes, heavy machinery, and explosions, so it's not missed.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static with music.

Featurette (5:58)

    This is a short making-of piece, with chunks lifted out of the interviews. Pretty much negligible.

Theatrical Trailer (1:10)

    A reasonable trailer, but with the usual quota of spoilers.

Interviews

• Tim Robbins (4:52)
• Rhys Ifans (4:16)
• Patricia Arquette (3:32)
• Miranda Otto (2:57)
• Michael Gondry — director (3:41)

    The Region 1 disc is another of those discs with the wide-screen transfer on one side, and full-screen on the other side. Apart from that, the two discs seem to have similar features, and similar decent but not outstanding transfers. Unless you must have a full-screen version, there seems no compelling reason to chose one version over the other.

    One of those "what a waste" movies, given a decent presentation on DVD.

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are fairly basic, but not bad.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall