Directed by: Stephen Karam
Starring: Richard Jenkins, Jayne Houdyshell, Amy Schumer, Beanie Feldstein, Steven Yeun, June Squibb
To look life straight in the eyes- that is not easy. Living is hard. Living is depressing. Sometimes it’s very clear that that is what it is, sometimes it’s all hidden behind the shadows of the fiction that “everything all good.”
In short, that is what author and director Stephen Karam wants to point out in this movie. He is doing it masterfully. First on the stage, and now on the screen.
This movie is special. It is so heavy in tension where nobody expects it. Soft speaking characters present a relaxed family atmosphere during a Thanksgiving gathering, it’s all so natural. But behind that is a life. Behind that is what is real. Behind that is obesity, lost love, lost jobs, illnesses of all kinds (depression, dementia, pre cancer condition), too much booze, cheating, loss of property due to immorality… you name it. And all that in the form of just a half dozen people that make up one one simple, everyday, family.
Karam wants to ask one of the toughest questions of all: if there is so much trouble in this tight family circle, then how much trouble is all around everybody else? Can you measure the amount of unhappiness lingering towards every single unit of the mass called the humans? Or this is something with endless proportions? Is anybody happy at all? Or are there two groups: first, those who admit to being unhappy and second, those who believe in fakes and illusions living with constantly closed eyes, ears, and feelings.
Sights and sounds are banging the alarms. They are everywhere in this newly rented and in awful condition apartment in Chinatown in New York where the Blake family is in one place for the holidays. The family is close. Looks like all their lives are on the right track, more or less. But there are big gaps in between showings and secrets. They are all sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table but they exist on parallel lines, they can go on forever but will never touch each other.
Coming close to the final stages, Karam intensifies the symbolism of unsettledness through shutting off the lights in the apartment. One by one they will go off, leaving less and less lights between the “parallel lines.” In the final scene, they are all out of the flat but also the lights. Just one light from the hallway is coming inside the unit but even that one will be gone when the entrance door will close by itself. Genius vision, perfectly executed.
This last sequence of the movie is so spectacular, so unique. It is generating the whole picture of eclipsing the once, living in harmony and so called happy family. Dysfunctions are filling the moment the squeaking closing door is a messenger announcing a rapidly incoming end.
The humans are an award winning play. It will be an award winning movie. Count on it.
