I'm lead to believe Human Traffic is somewhat of a cult film, but a cult film within certain circles to do with fans of clubbing and raving. It's no surprise because that's really all the film is, a documented and filmed account of what it's like to rave and club; for the rest of us, it's a non-event; a moderately dramatic and slightly inventive drama about British young adults that try to kill off sensations of pain to do with stresses of work, flailing relationships and even the actual lack of them. Human Traffic is a very specific film in the sense it is going to appeal to a direct audience; the illusion that the audience are seeing something better than what it is lies in the surrealistic content that has wormed its way into the film thanks to other recent attempts at the time such as Trainspotting and The Acid House. On the other hand, the filmmakers are not fooling anyone else.
The trouble with the film is its study of this particular mentality. The defining scene is about half way through the film in which a couple of the main characters stand on a stairway to a large, old manor house and systematically turn around to the camera to address us. If you're struggling for a visualisation, think the opening few seconds of the music video to that Spice Girls song from years back entitled 'Wannabe'. As they turn to face us, they talk and laugh in our direction about how brilliant the night's going to be and how they love doing what they do. The problem here is that rather than see the night through the eyes of one of the characters, the highs and lows but hopefully not too much of either without the highs glamorised; we are invited to see the scenes unfold through our own perspective that is the camera's POV.
This means whatever viewpoint or opinion we have on these people and this lifestyle will stick throughout this sequence, meaning if you're into it you'll be loving it but if it's all alien to you in the first place, you'll probably be despising what's going on. We are not invited to participate through one of the characters, instead we must watch from outside the box as events unfold in a dreary fashion.
The film is one of those driven by lifestyle and consequence rather than out and out narrative. There is a lot of narration establishing the life certain people lead as well as several scenes that kill time whilst coming across as quite eccentric afterthoughts, the scene in which everyone stands up in the pub and sings at the camera being one of them. Jip (Simm) is the narrator and is so all over the place, both in speech and movement, that he manages to go from mentioning Neil Armstrong to talking of Milky Bar chocolate bars in one monologue spanning about four seconds. Such is the nature of the film.
Simm plays the character well, a sort of eccentric person who's on the brink between being perfectly normal and completely loosing his mind completely. Simm hates his life and 'lives for the weekend' where he can let loose and try to scratch that itch of not having had a partner in ages. Initially, Jip is conflicted on his lifestyle after all this time. He initially seems to be on the brink of an epiphany but he doesn't know it. It looks as if he's about to mature, questioning his lifestyle and coming to terms with the damage he's doing to himself. Unfortunately, the film does cop out towards the end with this idea and has Jip find a partner, thus halting the possible maturity stone dead. All of a sudden he's happy with his lifestyle and nothing seems so bad after all, which was disappointing.
Along with Jip are Koop (Parkes); Lulu (Pilkington) and Moff (Dyer). What they get up to is slightly uninteresting at the best of times, their activity only demonised on the rare occasion Danny Dyer narrates what it's like to come down off drugs at a bash full of random people all doing the same thing. The film is all style, with its study of the British male in crisis filling in the rest. Jump cuts; breaking the fourth wall; subtitles and popular culture dialogue are the attempts at coming across as somewhat different to what you might have expected. For watching ravers, it'll add to the disillusioned sense they might already have while watching but for everyone else, it's just quite ordinary and often comes across as a bit of a gimmick.
Very near the film's immediate beginning is a short monologue about how a 17 year old boy hopes to have sex for the first time on a night out with the characters. This will instil some viewers with dread as to what might come; others will probably laugh their heads off and miss the subsequent thirty seconds of the film through that laughter. Human Traffic can be added to list containing Trainspotting and The Acid House as surrealist, realist drama comedies made in Britain around about the turn of the decade. It isn't as good as those films because it doesn't feel grounded. The film might just as well have been shot with real ravers on a real night out, but of course where's all the director's post-modern style going to come from then? After all, we've got to have all that in there- haven't we?
The trouble with the film is its study of this particular mentality. The defining scene is about half way through the film in which a couple of the main characters stand on a stairway to a large, old manor house and systematically turn around to the camera to address us. If you're struggling for a visualisation, think the opening few seconds of the music video to that Spice Girls song from years back entitled 'Wannabe'. As they turn to face us, they talk and laugh in our direction about how brilliant the night's going to be and how they love doing what they do. The problem here is that rather than see the night through the eyes of one of the characters, the highs and lows but hopefully not too much of either without the highs glamorised; we are invited to see the scenes unfold through our own perspective that is the camera's POV.
This means whatever viewpoint or opinion we have on these people and this lifestyle will stick throughout this sequence, meaning if you're into it you'll be loving it but if it's all alien to you in the first place, you'll probably be despising what's going on. We are not invited to participate through one of the characters, instead we must watch from outside the box as events unfold in a dreary fashion.
The film is one of those driven by lifestyle and consequence rather than out and out narrative. There is a lot of narration establishing the life certain people lead as well as several scenes that kill time whilst coming across as quite eccentric afterthoughts, the scene in which everyone stands up in the pub and sings at the camera being one of them. Jip (Simm) is the narrator and is so all over the place, both in speech and movement, that he manages to go from mentioning Neil Armstrong to talking of Milky Bar chocolate bars in one monologue spanning about four seconds. Such is the nature of the film.
Simm plays the character well, a sort of eccentric person who's on the brink between being perfectly normal and completely loosing his mind completely. Simm hates his life and 'lives for the weekend' where he can let loose and try to scratch that itch of not having had a partner in ages. Initially, Jip is conflicted on his lifestyle after all this time. He initially seems to be on the brink of an epiphany but he doesn't know it. It looks as if he's about to mature, questioning his lifestyle and coming to terms with the damage he's doing to himself. Unfortunately, the film does cop out towards the end with this idea and has Jip find a partner, thus halting the possible maturity stone dead. All of a sudden he's happy with his lifestyle and nothing seems so bad after all, which was disappointing.
Along with Jip are Koop (Parkes); Lulu (Pilkington) and Moff (Dyer). What they get up to is slightly uninteresting at the best of times, their activity only demonised on the rare occasion Danny Dyer narrates what it's like to come down off drugs at a bash full of random people all doing the same thing. The film is all style, with its study of the British male in crisis filling in the rest. Jump cuts; breaking the fourth wall; subtitles and popular culture dialogue are the attempts at coming across as somewhat different to what you might have expected. For watching ravers, it'll add to the disillusioned sense they might already have while watching but for everyone else, it's just quite ordinary and often comes across as a bit of a gimmick.
Very near the film's immediate beginning is a short monologue about how a 17 year old boy hopes to have sex for the first time on a night out with the characters. This will instil some viewers with dread as to what might come; others will probably laugh their heads off and miss the subsequent thirty seconds of the film through that laughter. Human Traffic can be added to list containing Trainspotting and The Acid House as surrealist, realist drama comedies made in Britain around about the turn of the decade. It isn't as good as those films because it doesn't feel grounded. The film might just as well have been shot with real ravers on a real night out, but of course where's all the director's post-modern style going to come from then? After all, we've got to have all that in there- haven't we?