‘The Humans’: happiness is just out of reach

Above : Stephen Karam’s film “The Humans” is a study of a dysfunctional Thanksgiving family dinner. (Photo/A24)

Movie review : “The Humans,” written and directed by Stephen Karam, starring Richard Jenkins, Jayne Houdyshell, Amy Schumer, Beanie Feldstein, Stephen Yuen, June Squibb. Streaming on various services.

The Christmas holidays, our annual opportunity to meet up with family and friends, are here. And yet, as many of us know, such gatherings  can be emotionally trying.

If Aunt Betty isn’t carping about her arthritis, then Uncle Carl is babbling on about the hot-topic issues of the day – especially about those that are emphasized endlessly by his favorite “fair and balanced” TV network.

Such divisions have gotten only worse in recent years. Disputed elections, attacks on the capital building, random shootings, billionaires riding phallic-shaped rockets into space, more and more radical weather patterns – all have added to the political and social split that the U.S. is currently enduring.

And they’re never more apparent than during holiday family gatherings, which is the scenario around which writer-director Stephen Karam has built his film “The Humans.” Based on his stage play of the same title, which won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play, “The Humans” is set in a run-down New York apartment building.

It is there, in the two-level, multi-room space owned by Brigid and Richard – played, respectively, by Beanie Feldstein and Steven Yuen – that the Blake family has met up to celebrate Thanksgiving. Brigid’s parents, Erik (played by Richard Jenkins ) and Deirdre (played by Jayne Houdyshell ) have come in from Scranton, Pa., bringing with them Erik’s mother (played by June Squibb), whom everyone refers to as Momo.

When we first see her, Momo – who has dementia – is in a wheelchair. And the trouble that Erik experiences simply getting her chair through the apartment’s front door is a harbinger of difficulties to come. Momo, though, isn’t the only one with problems. Brigid’s older sister Aimee (played by Amy Schumer ), a lawyer from Philadelphia, is facing a serious operation – a situation that is complicated by the fact that she’s depressed over the prospect of losing her job and of having just broken up with her girlfriend.

But, then, as the evening progresses, we discover that everyone is upset about something. Those individual problems, in addition to making normal communication resound with implied resentments, lead ultimately to revelations of secrets that have a far more profound impact on all involved.

All this is rendered in what is Karam’s first feature film, though you’d never suspect it, so fully does he command everything. His camera seamlessly haunts the apartment – flowing from one room, one floor, one character, one potentially painful and oppressive situation to the next – becoming a character in and of itself.

Just as effective is his dialogue, which captures the way real people interact. Mundane, overlapping conversations are routinely peppered with barbs, followed almost immediately by not-always-credible apologies. Only rarely does anyone utter something that speaks to a larger truth. And when that truth does emerge, it is stunning.

On occasion, Karam’s camera will even exaggerate the mood. It may focus for long seconds on a pipe, a wall stain or peer down a narrow hallway into a darkened room, each instance – along with the occasionally sudden sharp sound – adding to the kind of persistent spookiness typical of a horror film.

But then, domestically speaking, that’s precisely the ambience Karam’s film taps into: that often unspoken, fear-based feeling prevalent in families more accustomed to pushing individual members apart than in embracing any kind of emotional glue, other than habit, to bind them as one.

It’s hardly worth noting, that the cast Karam has assembled is uniformly superb, from the reliable Jenkins to the stand-up comic Schumer and veteran Houdyshell – the only cast member from the Broadway stage production . That they all are talented is, as it should be, a given.

What’s more pertinent is the effect they all, through Karam, leave us with: a recognition that, in the end, we’re all just flawed humans at heart, many of us seeking a sense of happiness that so often feels out of reach – even if we think we can see it lurking just a short way down a dark hallway.

An edited version of this review was broadcast previously on Spokane Public Radio.