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<font size="4"><br>Humanité</font>
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<br>movie review by David Ng</font>
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<p><font size="3" face="Book Antiqua,Century Schoolbook,Times New Roman"><font size="6"><b>W</b></font>atching <i>Humanité</i> is a grueling experience, not because it is tedious or boring, but because it places us so deeply within the memory of its hero, a small town police officer named Pharaon De Winter, that we have no choice but to succumb to the whim of his recollection. It’s not an easy job. Characters fade in and out of focus. Trivialities take on great importance while more pressing matters recede inexplicably into the background. To spend two and a half hours inside this man’s head can feel like a prison sentence. But writer/director Bruno Dumont never asks us to care for or even like him. His strategy is, in fact, the reverse. He recreates De Winter’s state of mind with such intensity that we get disoriented. What is real, what is imagined, what is real but distorted? We can never know for certain, and that’s what makes <i>Humanité</i> frustrating and intriguing. It all builds up to the final shot, which reveals everything and nothing, and which asks us to reconsider what we’ve just witnessed.
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