Hu-Man

I waited 17 years to see this film, having first heard about Hu-Man on Mark Cousins' BBC TV programme Scene By Scene in 1998 when he interviewed Terence Stamp.

Cousins, although occasionally irritating, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema yet even he admitted that he had never seen Hu- Man and didn't even know anyone who had.

From that point it became number two on the list of films I most wanted to see behind Hitchcock's The Mountain Eagle and the original version of this review written 10 years ago was a request for help in getting hold of the film.

At one stage Hu-Man was even rumoured to be a lost film before a 25 minute version was shown at the British Film Institute in 2013.

Then an 86 minute version suddenly became available in 2015, I got a couple of responses to my original request and my long wait was finally over.

Having now seen the film it isn't really surprising that it proved to be a disappointment.

A film with Terence Stamp and Jeanne Moreau that hardly anyone has seen... There has to be a reason.

The story really doesn't help.

Stamp plays an actor called... Terence Stamp who is still coming to terms with the death of his wife three years earlier and is approached by his former lover Sylvana (Moreau) about the possibility of appearing on a live TV show. The object of the show is to convert the audience's emotional responses into energy that can be stored in a time dome and later used to propel Stamp into the future.

No attempt is ever made to explain how this is done which is perhaps a good thing.

But then again there is very little attempt to explain anything that is going on such as Stamp's sudden transportation to a glacier or why a trip into the future would also include a complete change of location to the edge of a very active volcano.

There are however some memorable scenes such as Stamp being trapped on the bay of Mont St Michel during a live TV broadcast as a tide approaches from all angles - the attempt to harness audience emotions - and the unexplained shot of our hero gliding through the air during the glacier sequence is as impressive as it was undoubtedly precarious for old Terence.

But the film, clearly influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey, suffers from having very little plot or dialogue and often appears as sparse as the landscapes to which Stamp is transported.

It isn't very good but I'm glad I finally saw it.

Not much of a movie, more of a 90 minute instagram story of Terence Stamp: lots of nature, doing extreme exciting stuff like hanging out of a helicopter(years before the invention of GoPro), sleeping on volcanoes, laying face down on a (toxic?!?!) sulfur mine, being a QWEEN, some relationship stats & amazing psych rock music. Far out concept of generating energy from the audience, the movie itself doesn't have much substance. 6 stars for Terence's dedication. This movie needs a remake, get on board Jodorowsky!

Terence Stamp ended several years' meditative retirement from acting for...this? Hm. Best-known only for being extremely hard to see (apparently it was actually thought a "lost" film for a while), this fatuous French vanity project has him as a figure of reclusive mystery named, er, Terence Stamp, a famous movie star who's hidden from the world since his wife's mysterious (natch) death. Ex-girlfriend Jeanne Moreau coaxes him into participating in a scientific space-travel experiment in which the emotion an actor can project/elicit will somehow make him "reveal the future like an oracle" for a "worldwide audience." In each inner-space adventure he must die, via drowning, avalanche, or whatever.

The concept is as vague and pretentious as it is silly, and lamentably presented without any humor whatsoever. This is one of those films in which wondering just what drugs the creators were doing when they conceived it is more interesting than anything onscreen. Stamp has rarely been so stilted-never let an actor play themselves as Futuristic Jesus Christ, usually clad in all-white, I guess. The whole enterprise is 1970s Europudding indulgence at its absolute worst, a glossy but entirely empty exercise in pseudomystical woo-woo that could not possibly have appealed to anyone outside the bubble of jet-set art dabblers like the filmmakers themselves.

This appears to be the only narrative feature by its director, and no wonder. Unless you want to see a longhaired Stamp running around or looking "meaningfully" confused in various exotic locations for no particular reason (imagery that would have been better as the actual expensive fashion shoot that they feel like), apparently making up scenes as he goes (was there even a real script?), there is nothing here to hold attention beyond sheer curiosity value. The film reaches for a kind of enigmatic pictorialism that someone like Tarkovsky or Antonioni could manage. But here you find out what that aspiration amounts to without any depth whatsoever behind it: Pure upscale-magazine-shoot affectation, rich people striking poses in settings (lava flows! glaciers!) it no doubt cost a lot of $$ to transport a crew into, believing that shooting an actor looking monkish in a remote locale MUST be "spiritual," right?!? By the third or fourth time Stamp was filmed laying on the ground, then emitting one of those all-purpose "God why hast thou forsaken me!!!" yells, I started to find it hilarious. Unfortunately, "Hu-Man" is mostly waaaaay too boring to keep those unintentional laughs coming. (Note: What I saw seemed to be the 86-minute version others have reported seeing. God only knows how excruciating the longer original version was, if IMBD's runtime is correct.)

The sci-fi aspect is basically confined to dialogue, the story is nonexistent, the vibe at times comes close to the abstraction of a video gallery installation or something like without actually making the commitment to fully break from commercial norms. So, ouch, it's just a pointless ordeal. Many years after this was made, I saw Terence Stamp speak at a tribute event for him, and he was absolutely hilarious in spinning anecdotes about his career. I wonder what he would have said about this film, if asked-it's hard to imagine he ever took himself so seriously, in such a vacuous fashion, again.

I give 9 out of 10 because I'm not sure the film has stand it through the years. Otherwise, in my memory, it's one my real favorite one. I remember that I was like hypnotized by this movie. It was also this film that made me adore Terence Stamp (he is so great in "the Hit" from Stephen Frears, another cult-movie for me). Some scenes are still alive in my mind. Especially when the whole world "prayes" to help the hero fly away through mind-force. It's a SF story but with a very particular mood. Calm, strange, soft, very bright lights. It's one of these movies that I really would like to see again (like "Brewster McCloud" or "Themroc" that i long to see again…). The story has something in common with "Zardoz" from John Boorman. This play with time, eternity, things happening softly, with no stress, no running, and so much weirdness. I also remember the music was aerial. I don't know if this movie is existing somewhere, if it can be seen or bought but I'd like to.