Plot

The film portrays the experience of a single human soul, portrayed by Williams, through various incarnations. Williams is the only common actor throughout the stories that span man's history on Earth.

An attempt on director-screenwriter Bill Forsyth

Bill Forsyth

Bill Forsyth is a Scottish film director and writer, noted for his commitment to national film-making.Forsyth first came to attention with a low-budget film, That Sinking Feeling, made with youth theatre actors and featuring a cameo appearance by the Edinburgh gallery owner Richard Demarco...

's part to depict by visual means the ordinariness of life throughout the ages, Being Human is deliberately slow in its pace in order to emphasize how slow life often is. The structure is one of vignette-like character studies of one man (actually at least four distinct men, all with the same soul) who keeps making the same relationships and mistakes throughout his lifetimes.

In the first incarnation, which he appears to be an ancient Celt, his family is taken from him by raiders due to his cowardice and hesitation. Before his wife is taken away she says "Don't lose the children!" The next incarnation is in Ancient Rome in which he, Hector, is a slave to a "foolish master" who loses his fortune and is compelled to commit suicide by his debtors and orders Hector to join him. Hector longed to be free to find the children and wife he had before he became a slave but he has fallen in love with another slave and forgets his waiting family. The third incarnation he is a Scottish crusader on his way home to his children. The master from his life in Rome as a slave is now a crusader trying to decide to be a priest or not in this incarnation and they travel together until Hector finds his soul mate from the life in Rome. She is a widow in this incarnation and wishes Hector to join her family but his duties to the children in Scotland pull at him. In his fourth incarnation, Hector is finally forced to confront his capacity for cowardly indecision that recurs in his lives. He is a Portuguese man in the renaissance shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. He is the master in this life, his wife from the first incarnation is shipwrecked with him as his spurned lover and the raider who spirited her away is her steadfast friend. In the fifth incarnation he is a modern man in New York paying the consequences of cowardly indecision and gaining the strength to address the children he lost lifetimes ago. He is joined in this life by his master/slave/friend, soul mate, and former wife/lover and her husband/raider from life times past support him but are people who are trying to find their own way through in this life just as in the past lives.

Production

After poor test screenings, Warner Bros. instructed Bill Forsyth to trim 40 minutes from the film, as well as add narration and a happy ending. Forsyth subsequently disowned the film.

Cast

• Hector: Robin Williams
  Robin Williams
  Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...
  
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• Lucinnius: John Turturro
  John Turturro
  John Michael Turturro is an American actor, writer and director known for his roles in the films Do the Right Thing , Miller's Crossing , Barton Fink , Quiz Show , The Big Lebowski , O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Transformers film series...
  
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• Julian: Bill Nighy
  Bill Nighy
  William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
  
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• The Priest: Vincent D'Onofrio
  Vincent D'Onofrio
  Vincent Phillip D'Onofrio is an American actor, director, film producer, writer, and singer. Often referred to as an actor's actor, his work as a character actor has earned him the nickname of "Human Chameleon"...
  
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• The Pre-Historic Shaman: Robert Carlyle
  Robert Carlyle
  Robert Carlyle, OBE is a Scottish film and television actor. He is known for a variety of roles including those in Trainspotting, Hamish Macbeth, The Full Monty, The World Is Not Enough, Angela's Ashes, The 51st State, and 28 Weeks Later...
  
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• Hermes: Simon McBurney
  Simon McBurney
  Simon Montagu McBurney, OBE is an English actor, writer and director. He is the founder and artistic director of Théâtre de Complicité in England, now called Complicite.-Early life:...
  
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• Dom Paulo: Hector Elizondo
  Hector Elizondo
  Héctor Elizondo is an American actor. Elizondo's first major role was that of "God" in the play Steambath, for which he won an Obie Award...
  
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• Boris: William H. Macy
  William H. Macy
  William Hall Macy, Jr. is an American actor and writer. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo. He is also a teacher and director in theater, film and television. His film career has been built mostly on his appearances in small, independent films, though...
  
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• Beatrice: Anna Galiena
  Anna Galiena
  Anna Galiena is an Italian actress, best known to English-speaking audiences for her appearances in Le Mari de la coiffeuse, Jamón, jamón and Being Human.-Movie career:...
  
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• Francisco: Jonathan Hyde
  Jonathan Hyde
  Jonathan Hyde is an Australian-born English actor, well known for his roles as J. Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Line in Titanic, Egyptologist Allen Chamberlain in The Mummy and Sam Parrish/Van Pelt, the hunter in Jumanji. He is married to the Scottish soprano Isobel Buchanan...
  
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• The Storyteller: Theresa Russell
  Theresa Russell
  Theresa Russell is an American actress.-Biography:Russell was born Theresa Paup in San Diego, California, the daughter of Carole Platt and Jerry Russell Paup. She attended Burbank High School, but did not graduate. She married English film director Nicolas Roeg , in 1982...
  
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• Alvarez: Ewan McGregor
  Ewan McGregor
  Ewan Gordon McGregor is a Scottish actor. He has had success in mainstream, indie, and art house films. McGregor is perhaps best known for his roles as heroin addict Mark Renton in the drama Trainspotting , young Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy , and poet Christian in the...