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| To demonstrate his success, Nathan takes Puff on tour. Puff secretly drinks heavily and patronizes prostitutes. Meanwhile, Nathan and Lila's relationship deteriorates and he is seduced into an affair by a scheming Gabrielle. Eventually Lila decides to take Puff back into the forest to undo his manners training and return him to his natural state. | To demonstrate his success, Nathan takes Puff on tour. Puff secretly drinks heavily and patronizes prostitutes. Meanwhile, Nathan and Lila's relationship deteriorates and he is seduced into an affair by a scheming Gabrielle. Eventually Lila decides to take Puff back into the forest to undo his manners training and return him to his natural state. | ||
| Lila and Puff live naked in the woods together until |
Lila and Puff live naked in the woods together until found by a threatening Nathan, who is killed by Puff. 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). | 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). | ||
Revision as of 13:46, 30 September 2021
2001 film by Michel Gondry | This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Human Nature" 2001 film – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Human Nature | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Michel Gondry |
| Written by | Charlie Kaufman |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Tim Maurice-Jones |
| Edited by | Russell Icke |
| Music by | Graeme Revell |
| Production companies | |
| Distributed by |
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| Release dates |
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| Running time | 96 minutes |
| Countries |
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| Language | English |
| Budget | $8.6 million |
| Box office | $1.6 million |
Human Nature is a 2001 comedy-drama film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry in his directorial debut. The film stars Tim Robbins, Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto and Patricia Arquette.
It was screened out of competition at the 54th Cannes International Film Festival.
Plot
Most of the film 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 lived as a wild animal his entire life. Lila discards her clothes and chases him until he's cornered on a tree branch. The man falls off the branch, knocked unconscious. Brought to Nathan's lab, the man is named Puff, after Nathan's 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 conditioned reinforcement training on Puff, inculcating him with a veneer of fine manners and high culture, in spite of which Puff 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 he is seduced into an affair by a scheming Gabrielle. Eventually Lila decides to take Puff back into the forest to undo his manners training and return him to his natural state.
Lila and Puff live naked in the woods together until found by a threatening Nathan, who is killed by Puff. 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 film, 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. "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."
Cast
- Patricia Arquette as Lila Jute
- Hilary Duff as Young Lila Jute
- Tim Robbins as Nathan Bronfman
- Rhys Ifans as Puff
- Rosie Perez as Louise
- Miranda Otto as Gabrielle
- Peter Dinklage as Frank
- Mary Kay Place as Mrs. Bronfman
- Robert Forster as Mr. Bronfman
- Toby Huss as Puff's Father
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.
Reception
Box office
Human Nature has grossed $705,308 in the United States and Canada, and $869,352 in other territories for a worldwide total of 1.6 million, against a production budget of $8.6 million.
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 49% based on 94 reviews, and an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's consensus reads, "As quirky as Being John Malkovich but not as funny, Human Nature feels too forced and unengaging." On Metacritic, it has an average score of 56 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews."
Roger Ebert, in a three-star (out of a possible four) review, lauded the film's "screwball charm".
See also
References
- "Human Nature (2001)". British Film Institute. London. Archived from the original on August 2, 2012. Retrieved October 16, 2012.
- ^ JP. "Human Nature (2001)- JPBox-Office". www.jpbox-office.com.
- ^ "Human Nature (2002)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ "Human Nature (2002) – International Box Office Results". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- "Festival de Cannes: Human Nature". Festival-Cannes.com. Retrieved October 24, 2009.
- Opera Theologica p. 31.
- "Human Nature (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved April 26, 2018.
- "Human Nature Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
- Ebert, Roger (April 12, 2002). "Human Nature". Chicago Sun-Times. RogerEbert.com. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
External links
| Films directed by Michel Gondry | |
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| Charlie Kaufman | |
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- 2001 films
- American films
- French films
- 2000s fantasy comedy-drama films
- American satirical films
- Films directed by Michel Gondry
- American fantasy comedy-drama films
- 2001 directorial debut films
- English-language films
- Films with screenplays by Charlie Kaufman
- StudioCanal films
- Films scored by Graeme Revell
- English-language French films
- 2000s satirical films
- French fantasy comedy-drama films
- French satirical films