Being Human (1994)

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

For some reason (one can only presume his ego got the better of him) Bill Forsyth actually made a big-budget art-house film here. If that isn't an error of judgement sufficient to end a career, I don't know what is.It's hard to fathom how he thought it would be possible for such a film to be released commercially. And while the producers presumably forked out for it without actually studying the screenplay - somehow persuaded that they should all go to Morocco to shoot some scenes on a beach and some dunes - it boggles the mind how the director and the producers managed to remain so far out of alignment on their target market, right through to the film's completion.In any case, Warner Bros understandably couldn't market it to mainstream cinema audiences, and in a desperate attempt to salvage something, cut it severely and added a narrative voice-over to dumb it down. If anything, the surgery only made it worse. Not only has it lost its artistic integrity, it has a slapped-on narration - presumably in imitation of a bed-time story - that crops up at meaningful moments to let us know that it's a meaningful moment. The narration adds nothing, only patronises. Worse, it is incongruously done in strident tones and a raw, modern American accident. It's hard to think of a more botched attempt to salvage a film.It's not a difficult film, but it does require some indulgence. Certainly, mainstream cinema-going viewers will only be nonplussed at having to think about what they are watching, having to tease subtleties, ambiguities, and ironies from a series of slow moving, wistful, existential stories.Forsyth's original screenplay demanded even more indulgence, trying to extract depths of meaning out of every moment. This obsession at painting emotion is what really sinks the film - it's more literary than cinematic, and little of the attempt successfully translates to the screen. Thus, when Hector in the first story sees the boats coming in, he stands there hesitantly in full view of them and there is little sense of the absolute terror the screenplay he tells us he feels - mainly he comes across as simple-minded.There is plenty, though, to appeal to the intelligent viewer who likes to reflect on life. The historical scenarios (except for the last segment) are interesting choices - it is rare to be taken to those times and places - some of them fairly unique. The moral or practical challenges presented to Hector each time are never boring. We like him for being hapless and benign, and we come to care for his welfare. This is excellent and engaging - for the thinking viewer - and is all the better for the straightforward technique, without any of the manipulative technology-driven tricks of modern Hollywood.However, it's hardly an unsung masterpiece. No consistent theme emerges. Nothing really coheres into a whole. The stories needed to be much cleverer for it all to come together into a frisson of satisfaction at the end - nothing really does come together. Two of the stories have hopeful endings (if not entirely happy), the others have sad, wistful, or ambiguous endings. If there was significance in the ending of each, it was too subtle to grasp. By the last story we (might) realise that footwear seems to be a theme, though quite what the moral is there in terms of the human condition, is obscure. Other symbols, such as the windmill and the cross, if symbols they are, don't work at all, as almost everyone will miss them completely.Worse, Hector hardly stands for the whole human race, having evolved apparently into the fashionably-sensitive liberal, the banality of which is revealed in the last story, which serves up the biggest cliché of them all: father issues, presented here with dismal earnestness as Hector bonds with his estranged children. When Hector is told that his son only needs a hug to solve everything, and his early-teen daughter gives him a little lecture on meaningful moments, I'm not sure whether my howls were of excruciation, disbelief, or disappointment.

Could be the movie that had the greatest impact on me of all time, no doubt more than likely because I was going through the identical same struggle with fatherhood at the moment I saw it. It was shortly after release on satellite in summer of 1995 (we had an early 10-foot dish) and I saw it with my "new" family at our home in an old mining town in Arizona. I had just gotten home from work and in stone cold sobriety managed to see myself in turn so exquisitely entrapped in the same quandaries as "Hector" that specifically at the moment of the simple act of his being given a pair of boots during the African shipwreck vignette, I had to run outside into the cool starry night. The top of my head seemed to explode and my "self" spontaneously shifted levels and merged with the consciousness of the universe. I unaccountably became a bodhisattva for some months (i. e. you could say I flipped my lid.) My co-workers were terrified of me when I returned to work, but my family and most everyone else I knew marveled at the change and soon grew to approve of it. For a while I was like John Travolta's character in "Phenomenon." This kind of effect from watching a movie isn't unheard of in history. In fact it occurred to me on another occasion upon reading a tiny little book by an author with the pseudonym "Alcyone." That a movie or book can have that type of effect on another human being implies that it's nothing short of marvelous, some kind of mystic key. I don't want to be a spoiler so I'll say nothing more than that. I saw it only that one time, and it worked magic on me that I still can't comprehend. What a director...

The life you live will be the same over and over again. You will repeat your lessons again and again in various forms until you have learned them. After learning it, there's evolution and wisdom. This is what can be said about this film except that it presents its stories without having this sort of spiritual value. It brings this idea of the eternal returning throughout this main character but it is developed almost like a fairy tale taken out of a children's book.Travelling through different countries and periods of time, going from the Celts cavemen to the modern New York businessman, "Being Human" has Robin Williams playing a character named Hector and his appearances in distinct centuries trying to learn what means to be an human being. In the five short stories created here, Hector, living as an Celtic in the highlands, had his wife and children taken away by barbarians; was the slave of a dumb master (John Turturro) in a more civilized era; an married man who fell in love with an foreign woman, a few centuries later; a military during the Portugual's Maritime Expansion on Africa, conquering new lands and new treasures; and as troubled divorced man trying to reconciliate with his children of whom he hasn't seen since the end of his marriage. The movie fails in being real or accurate enough in all of the stories except in the last one which is very close to us.Slow, of mannered delivery and hardly getting better as the stories unfold, "Being Human" is the kind of film that really follows its lessons, it'll only grow on you after countless views. In my case four attempts, of these in two I fell asleep (but always believing that there was something interesting there), one in which I watched the whole thing and didn't like and the last one in which my perception changed and end up being a good film, far from being a masterpiece that it could be. So, you'll have to watch this film over and over until you get something from it, then you can evolve into really saying if this is a good or a bad film. This whole idea of a man trapped in strange and quite horrendous situations where every kind of decision ruin his life but always running to something else thinking it'll be better and lead him to a good life, was brilliantly presented in a book called "The Star Rover" by Jack London. In it, the main character is a prisoner that can recall his past lives as a way of escaping from his current pain of being tortured. But in those lives things don't get any better and he's always getting into more and more trouble. "Being Human" falls as an pretentious art film with symbolisms that never work and stories that are difficult to be involved with. Luckily, they have Williams as a main actor and we root for him whatever the Hector he's playing. We care for Hector in all of his situations because there's something there that is involving enough to make us imagining what kind of decisions we would make if we were him. In at least, one of the stories you'll put yourself into Hector's shoes. Won't blame director/writer Bill Forsyth for the flaws presented here since this is not his original project, Warner Bros. forced him to cut the film and include an narration that is quite excessive and too much explanatory. The narration (provided by Theresa Russell) of a film destined to grown up's treats its audience as children, explaining many things we're seeing on the screen. It ruined some parts of the film. Result: poor criticism, an box-office failure and now who knows this film? I sincerely hope that one day Forsyth come out of the shadows and show to the world this film in its integrity in a director's cut DVD (even the known version is hard to find). The things that attracted me into "Being Human" are the quality of the performances, not only Williams but also Turturro, Lorraine Bracco, Hector Elizondo, Jonathan Hyde, Anna Galiena, William H. Macy among others; the beautiful cinematography; Michael Gibbs fantastic musical score (specially the music presented when the movie enters into the 20th Century, an highly agitated theme). The story, at times, knows how to hold our interest but only for those who have an open mind to accept the concept of a man living over and over a similar life that bears only difference of costumes and periods of time. Hector's conditions and the way love acts in his life are quite the same, yet he fails to learn something from these experiences. Very problematic but not enough to make you feel bad about it, "Being Human" comes as a good film about valuable and noble lessons that sometimes crosses our paths in this long journey of life. 7/10

I've seen a lot of Robin Williams movies, but after this one, I must draw the line. "Being Human" may possibly be the worst movie I have ever seen. The concept is dangerous, edgy, over the top- a modern man's family struggle is paralleled by other struggles throughout the history of man in order to suggest that there is one story that sort of gets played over and over again, just in different ways. However, this movie falls short in execution; way short. In fact, other than that it has sort of an intriguing concept, it plain stinks. And that's not an exaggeration. Anyone that can sit through this two-hour bomb without passing the time by making fun of it either thinks too much or doesn't think at all. It makes me wonder if this is one of those stories that they came up with by putting 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters and seeing what they got. I think that's how they made West Side Story too, but don't quote me on that.My rating: Stinky