Let me start by saying De Humani Corporis Fabrica should be watched with caution. Preferably on an empty stomach. And definitely not while eating ground beef.
If you’re familiar with the sensory sea-epic Leviathan, you’ll know what to expect from directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel. This includes intense, tedious, and often time uncomfortable moments from the natural world that force viewers to expand their horizons and thresholds. But instead of getting enveloped in the oceanic environment of an industrial shipping vessel, this time our attention is drawn to the smallest of minutiae in one of the highest-stress environments: the operating room.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica derives its name from the collection of books by anatomist André Vésale from the mid-1500s. The books thoroughly detail human anatomy based on Vésale’s findings from dissecting human bodies for science. The film quite literally lives up to its name; human flesh is cut, punctured, probed, cracked, sliced, and sewn in this deeply affecting commentary on the fragility of life.
Playing up slice-of-life (pun intended) vignettes over a traditional storyline structure, the film is an intimate look at the goings on inside the walls of a hospital during incredibly heightened moments. Knowing that as a patient, one needs to place their trust in the hands of a stranger–albeit, an incredibly smart and capable stranger–is a crazy thing when you really think about it. These situations, no matter how routine, are always life and death. The subjects in the film clearly have good intentions and maliciousness isn’t perceived once but the muttering of “I’m lost” by a surgeon as he’s in the middle of a surgery is as horrifying to witness as the surgery itself.
Despite the film’s graphic nature–which includes a Lasik-type eye surgery, an emergency C-section, and spinal surgery to combat severe scoliosis–perhaps the most somber moments come from the nursing facility that the filmmakers intermittently cut to between scenes. Here are senior citizens who are close to the brink of death, some of whom are aware the end is near. It’s haunting and humbling all at once.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica marks Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s fourth feature film collaboration. The directing duo currently works out of the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory (SEL) at Harvard University. A quick Google search describes the center as an experimental laboratory that promotes innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography. Using various forms of expression–including analog and digital media, installation, and performance–the directing duo’s work aims to explore the aesthetics and ontology of the natural and unnatural world.
118 minutes. Distributed by Grasshopper Film and Gratitude Films. Opening in LA at Laemmle Glendale on Friday, April 28, 2023.
