Karam, the director of The Humans: “nothing autobiographical, but I know certain dynamics”
Family group in hell. The Blakes: parents, mother-in-law, the two daughters, the child’s boyfriend. Gathered in the new, rather ramshackle, house in Chinatown that the younger couple just moved into and invited their relatives for Thanksgiving dinner. These are the ingredients with which Stephen Karam, forty-year-old American of Irish mother and Lebanese father, won a Tony Award, the US theater awards, and which he remixed to make his directorial debut, with the same title. The Humansnow available on the Mubi platform.
A comedy that veers towards the psychological thriller. “In my experiences of family reunions, the levels always mix. Lots of laughs, funny moments, some scary, some embarrassing. In some cases anxious embarrassments, sometimes more amusing ». Situations quite common also in the film: the mother Deirde (Jayne Houdyshell, formerly in the theatrical cast) and the father Erik (Richard Jenkins) arrived from Pennsylvania with their grandmother Momo, suffering from senile dementia (June Squibb) and they do not understand that the two boys in New York can adapt to living in a house so expensive and yet so badly done. With the best of intentions, they do nothing but communicate anxiety to their daughters: to the hostess Brigid (Beanie Feldstein), a musician in search of success, and to the greatest Aimee (Amy Schumer) who has just broken up with her girlfriend and would have zero desire to celebrate. . “Amy is a great actress, as well as a great comedian, it amazes me that no one had entrusted her with a role before her where she could show it. I was lucky, the actors are very good, they are all six – in the cast also Steven Yeun, ndr – protagonists”.
Everyone struggling with secrets and lies inside the two-story apartment that seems to have a life of its own, with the tension rising to the point of horror, one of the author’s favorite genres. “The scariest thing is to perceive how much anxiety, tension, discomfort, even pain there can be in a core like the Blakes. It is not a dysfunctional family, they love each other. It’s hard to watch for that. ‘ To put it with Tolstoy, all happy families are equal, every family is unhappy in its own way. “Nobody likes to analyze their own, but everyone loves to look at those of others. It is cathartic. Maybe you have a relative who is sick, like Grandma Momo who is losing touch with the world, maybe you have a broken heart like Aimee and you have to put the best face on a bad situation. We all know the frightening dynamics ». As Amy Schumer said: “Your family on vacation, what’s more explosive?”. Karam says he also drew from his experience of him. “There is nothing clearly autobiographical, but certain feelings are familiar to me.” In 2015, when she wrote the play, she couldn’t foresee that the pandemic would add meaning to the story of a family locked in a house. “Who could have imagined that we would have found ourselves closed to deal with our fears?” This makes the film more universal ».
August 11, 2022 (change August 11, 2022 | 20:04)
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