Critics reviews

What emerges in L’Humanite is a portrait of Pharaon as holy innocent, something like a human version of Bresson’s Balthazar. Of course, comparisons to Bresson and Dreyer are never far from Dumont, who has tried to distance himself from those greats in interviews. But the influence is there, like it or not, as they are with any director who so distinctly grasps toward transcendence.

L’Humanité makes a thematic drumbeat out of its characters’ preoccupation with staring. While this at times comes to feel redundant, Dumont’s refusal to give his characters reducible motivations is as mysterious as it is refreshing.

By embracing the poetry in the wrong move, Dumont made L’humanité, a film important not only because it is an unflinching, profoundly singular exploration of sex, death, guilt, and compassion but also because it released Dumont’s cinema from what naturalism there was in La vie de Jésus and set the tone for one of the great bodies of work in contemporary film.

Humanité is a strange, unsettling, profound meditation on the existence of evil... [Dumont's] slow, deliberate human epic rewards the patient, building to an unforgettable final shot that condenses the entire film to a single poignant image.

Dumont's skill is matched by Schott's performance. You cannot keep your eyes off him... [Humanity] is a film of extraordinary power.

["L'Humanité"] is a cogent development from La Vie de Jésus and nothing less than a masterpiece: haunting, disturbing and daring. It resists the generic boundaries of thriller, or police drama, or realist conventions of any sort, seeming instead to attain the status of some horrifying, extended bad dream which has somehow been tricked out with the superficial appurtenances of real life. Only its inconsistencies and unrealities hint at the fact that the viewer has actually been immersed in a strange nightmare universe: a hyper-real poem of darkness.

In outline “Humanite” sounds like a classic policier, but Dumont brings such breadth and depth to its telling that it emerges a compelling contemplation of the interplay of good and evil, and of sexuality and violence... “Humanite” surely must have been a most demanding experience for its flawless cast. It is, in turn, demanding itself, resulting in a film of stunning impact.

"L'Humanite" is not an easy film and is for those few moviegoers who approach a serious movie almost in the attitude of prayer. A great film, like a real prayer, is about the relationship of a man to his hopes and fate.

["L'Humanité] is staggering, gorgeously ambiguous. It's also terrestrial, languid, bizarrely erotic, remote and happy to wear its existentialism like a set of designer rosary beads. Read: vociferously in search of greatness - or rather in search of having greatness thrust upon it. Either way, in spite of its invitation to inflict cynicism upon it, it's ultimately extraordinary.

It's a bleak, fascinating tale of loneliness and desire. It's also one of the most confounding films imaginable... "Humanite" isn't like any other film: It's uncompromising, eerily affecting and wildly unresolved.

As a mannerist portrait of a few individuals, it's often amazing; as a spiritual statement about suffering in the contemporary world, it almost lives up to its title; for its blunt depictions of sex, it's about as carnal in an unvarnished way as filmmaking can get; and as a visual rendering of an area of northern France, it's pretty impressive. But as a police procedural, it's unsatisfying, far from being worked out in all its details.

The raw sensory effect this transfixing movie produces might almost be described as psychedelic. Surrendering to its vision feels a little like being exposed to the sun after losing a layer of skin... You probably won't feel comfortable when "Humanité" is over, but as you leave the theater you will feel more alive than when you entered.