Thanksgiving is supposed to be about sharing collective gratitude for our good fortune of the past year with family and friends, and an opportunity to enjoy a generous feast together. The reality is that these gatherings also can dredge up feelings of guilt and pain that some of the participants may be silently enduring, and with an infusion of alcohol some brutal truths can emerge to spoil the party. Stephen Karam’s Tony award-winning The Humans makes its arrival on the big screen just in time to put a reality check on this holiday ritual that can go either way. It marks the playwright’s debut feature film, in which he adapted his play for the screen.
The Blakes are an ordinary working-class American family who have gathered on the November holiday at the decrepit New York apartment of the youngest daughter and her new boyfriend. There’s Erik Blake, the patriarch, who works as a custodian at a parochial school in Scranton, Pa., his wife, Deirdre, who works in a clerical capacity, their adult daughters Aimee and Brigid and Erik’s elderly mother, Momo, who has Alzheimer’s disease. From the opening, the audience sees the water-damaged walls and hears the noisy pipes and the stomping of the upstairs neighbors from this unit in lower Manhattan, not far from the site of the World Trade Center. Erik frets not only for his younger daughter living in such a dank and decrepit place, but also that the building is in a flood zone and near the disaster site, in which he has a personal connection. As the sun begins to set and the dark and gloomy apartment becomes even darker and gloomier, Erik’s secrets as well as that of other family members come to light. A darkness that borders on the horrific envelopes this ordinary family in what is supposed to be a joyful day.
Two-time Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, The Shape Of Water) plays Erik, whose biggest flaw, initially, appears to be his overprotective attitude towards his children, but as the camera follows the Blakes through the holiday ritual, they realize that the decay surrounding Erik goes much deeper, all the way to his very soul. The film also stars Tony winner Jayne Houdyshell, who reprises the mother role she played on Broadway, Oscar nominee June Squibb, Amy Schumer, Beanie Feldstein and Steven Yeun.
A24’s The Humans opens in theaters and will be streaming on Showtime Thursday beginning Nov. 24.
Jenkins spoke via Zoom about being part of this small ensemble cast.
Angela Dawson: A lot of people approach Thanksgiving with dread. How do you feel about it?
Richard Jenkins: I like it; I get to see everybody. But I understand there are difficult times for some people at Thanksgiving. I always say it’s a day of hope because it may get contentious but everybody comes back the next year to try again. Why? Because everybody still loves each other—usually. If they don’t, why would they keep coming to Thanksgiving?
Dawson: The food is a great motivator.
Jenkins: Yeah, that’s true. I wonder why you wait to eat this just once a year. There’s a restaurant here (in Rhode Island) that has a menu item all year round that’s basically the Thanksgiving meal and I can’t resist it, I always have it there every time I go.
Dawson: Stephen Karam, who adapted his play for the screen, uses the camera in a unique way, with lingering shots, slow zooms and unusual angles. Can you talk about working with him and his style as a director?
Jenkins: I think it’s one of the hardest things to do—make a play into a movie. A lot of times, when they turn a play into a movie, (filmmakers) feel they have to “open it up.” For example, if you had a scene that was staged to be in a dining room, they’ll reset it in a restaurant. But Stephen doesn’t do that.
Sometime during the run of the play, he was watching it and thinking, “There’s a film here.” It had to do with what he saw that he couldn’t do on stage that he wanted to be part of this as a film. There are things that he did on film that you couldn’t do in a play. It’s a smart question to ask: “What can film do that theater can’t?” He also asked, “What can theater do that film can’t?” If you don’t ask those questions, there’s no reason to go from one to the other. You have to utilize what the strength of film. What he understands is how to tell the story through the camera. He gave this great example the other day: When the camera is on Aimee (Amy Schumer, who plays the older daughter) when she’s in the bathroom scrolling through her Instagram, it’s an extreme close up on her eyes. You can only do that in a movie. You don’t need to see the phone or her hands. That’s a director who knows what the camera can do. He understands what limitations film have and what advantages it has. That’s really smart.
Dawson: There are scenes where the camera is focused for a couple of minutes on you or one of the other characters, and it’s not just you speaking, but your reactions to what other characters are saying just out of frame, with no cutaways.
Jenkins: That’s right. Stephen understands that he can direct from where he wants you (the audience) to look. He wants you to see how I react to how the others are reacting to my story. He does the same thing with Jayne, where the camera stays on her as the rest of the family is talking. That’s really brilliant. Sometimes, like with the big confession (Erik) has, you don’t even see me; you see the backs of my daughters.
Dawson: As an audience member, you’re a fly on the wall.
Jenkins: You really do feel like you’re window-peeping, and thinking, “Is it really OK for me to look at this?” There were times I’d say, “Where’s the camera?” The camera would move around what we were doing and would pop up in places you wouldn’t expect. So, I was really interested in seeing what (the finished film) would look like.
Dawson: Erik seems obsessed with the decay and disrepair of Brigid’s apartment, and then there’s the menacing sounds of the pipes and the upstairs neighbor. It’s really like a horror movie, isn’t it?
Jenkins: The real horror is his own life. He’s a little jumpy from the beginning. As we were walking through the set, Stephen would point things out to me to touch or look at and say, “Here’s kind of a face,” but it wasn’t quite a face, and then I’d realize that the camera would be right there.
Dawson: Erik worries about his daughter living in a flood zone and hasn’t recovered from nearly losing his other daughter during 9/11. As a father yourself, is that an emotion that you could easily tap into? Even as they become adults, do you still worry about every little thing?
Jenkins: Yeah, but hopefully you learn to keep your mouth shut. The way not to do it is to give them flashlights (as gifts) and keep asking them about moving back to Scranton (as Erik does). That’s not the way to do it. I hope I don’t do that. But it’s done out of love and I think they understand that. For Erik, his concerns are such a huge part of him.
Dawson: Jayne Houdyshell is the only holdover from the stage version. What was it like working with her, as well as your other cast mates?
Jenkins: We immediately liked each other. That’s just luck. We still have a group text every week. We just really like each other. I was nervous about Jayne because she’s so good and she’s done this (role) so long. She’s thought about this character for years, and I had so much catching up to do. She was so non-judgmental and beautiful. I simply adored her from the moment I met her. We’re both from the Midwest so we just became friends. From the first read-through, she was so accepting and lovely. She was a bit nervous because she’s not really from the film world. She had a lot to do with making me comfortable.
Dawson: You’ve got the crime drama Nightmare Alley coming up Dec. 17, where you got to work with Guillermo del Toro (The Shape Of Water) again.
Jenkins: Yeah. That was a blast.