I remembered so little of what happens in Human Nature (2001) that it was like discovering the existence of a Charlie Kaufman film I had never seen before. It all came back to me as I was watching -- or at least it felt familiar -- but if asked to tell you any of what happened going in, I would have been unable. And now that I've seen all the Kaufman films that followed, I can recognize that it's a film overflowing with his traditional concerns and themes.
But I should start by talking about another collaborator in the film, the director, Michel Gondry.
I admit I forgot he was the director here, which challenges the notion that Spike Jonze was Kaufman's primary translator of his distinct vision of the world, at least before he started directing his scripts himself. Actually Gondry directed as many Kaufman films as Jonze did, two apiece. George Clooney is the only other person who has directed even one of Kaufman's scripts, and we'll get to that one in May.
I'm trying to think of the primary way Gondry's approach differs from Jonze's, and I can't, at least not in terms of Human Nature. The DIY aesthetic that would be introduced to some parts of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind would bear fruit in later Gondry works, like The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind, but he had not yet discovered his construction paper-inspired filmmaking style at this point.
But we're here to talk about Kaufman, not Gondry.
And Human Nature is a Kaufman movie through and through. It contains a line of dialogue, spoken by Tim Robbins, that may serve as a thesis statement for Kaufman's entire body of work: "I know how miserable it is to be alive."
Since this is undoubtedly Kaufman's least-seen work, I suppose a little plot synopsis would be helpful. The story revolves around not one but two Kaufmanian outsiders, or maybe even three depending on how you look at it. One is a child raised in the wild, thinking of himself as an ape, who is called Puff by the scientists who discover him. Another is a woman named Lila (Patricia Arquette) who is afflicted with hirsutism, meaning she has hair growing all over her body, which would (and does) make her a rather obvious companion for Puff. However, before she meets Puff she is matched up with Dr. Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins), a behavioral scientist who is trying to teach mice the correct dinner fork to use when eating their salad. Lila's friend and the woman administering her electrolysis (Rosie Perez) thinks he might not be particular about her condition (which she still keeps hidden from him) because of his small penis and because he's still a virgin at 35.
Upon discovering Puff in the wild, Bronfman takes it upon himself to reform the bestial creature into a gentleman of great refinement. In fact, the results are so successful that Puff litters his speech with 50 cent words and foreign phrases. Of course, remnants of the beast persist, like the fact that he still wants to hump any female that moves. A shock collar administered by Bronfman helps with that.
This has got Kaufman written all over it. In fact, it feels more similar to later Kaufman works even than the movie that kind of set our expectations for a Charlie Kaufman film, Being John Malkovich. It's got existentialism. It's got absurd comedy. (The shots of Puff being zapped across the room by the shock collar are acrobatic delights.) It's got love triangles. It's got eccentric science, which we first saw in Being John Malkovich and will continue to see in Eternal Sunshine. It's got awkwardness and neuroses and animal urges and the shame we feel over them.
One Kaufman trademark that I think really ties this film to I'm Thinking of Ending Things is what I referred to in my notes as "warped domesticity." Those scenes in Kaufman's latest where Jesse Plemons' character gets so triggered and agitated by his mother are presaged here. It's Bronfman here who has the twisted relationship with his mother (Mary Kay Place), who insisted he be punished if he used the wrong fork for his salad -- and led directly to his later work with mice. (A fact he denies in a handful of humorous exchanges with his therapist, played by Miguel Sandoval.) As far as I can tell, Place is the sole casting link between this and Malkovich, as she played the secretary who can't hear properly.
Kaufman's clear affinity for freaks is in ample quantity here, but the question really is, which character is the stand-in for the author? Bronfman seems like the obvious pick, as Kaufman has never been shy about self-deprecation -- I don't know if he was a virgin at 35 or has a small penis, but if he were he'd be unafraid of making that fact known to us. But his character is only the third most important in the narrative and the last of the main three introduced, and the character playing the Kaufman role is usually one of the two main leads. Certainly he would see himself in Lila and Puff also, Lila specifically, as her excess body hair is an outward manifestation of inward shame, the kind with which Kaufman is quite familiar.
In terms of the narrative itself, the film has a complicated structure that I also think of as a telltale sign of Kaufman's work. The story jumps around a bit, traveling into characters' pasts, without every being confusing, and shifts perspectives between the characters in a way that is also easy to follow. A shifting of perspective is often a narrative sin, a sign of bad writing rather than good writing, but Kaufman uses the tool as though the three main characters are all telling one chronicler -- maybe a documentarian -- the same story from their own viewpoints. It works exceedingly well.
I can't leave off discussing the film without noting that it had some interesting noir elements, or one in particular. (In addition to thinking of Kaufman things, I'm also thinking of noir things for my monthly series this year.) Miranda Otto is highly entertaining as Bronfman's assistant, a con artist who is pretending she's French (we don't realize until relatively late that she isn't) and is shamelessly throwing herself at Bronfman, despite the fact (or maybe specifically because of the fact) that he's already with Lila. She's a femme fatale, dressing the part in skimpy outfits and leading him down a path that leads to his own destruction.
I can see I was not really ready for Human Nature when I first saw it, as the rating I gave it on Letterboxd (or at least, the rating I gave it retroactively when I started using Letterboxd ten years ago) was only three stars. My experience with it this time around would have been a full higher star than that. It gets at all the core Kaufman issues while also being a jolly good time.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind will be on the docket in May.
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