La question humaine

If I am tired and want some mind-numbing entertainment, I don't mind a film that presents its issues in black and white - the baddies are bad, the goodies are good and the moral dilemmas are no more taxing than first grade arithmetic.

Heartbeat Detector does not fall into that category. It is not entertainment. Everything about it says this is a film to think about and take seriously. The web of lies, the conflicts between different players' sense of reality, they all cry out to us: art-house, subtlety, layers of meaning. How disappointing then that the film gradually degenerates into a simplistic (and false) moral message.

The true awfulness of the film is only discovered at the very end when the final scene thrusts its trite moral message upon us in a way that clearly implies (I won't spoil it for you by saying how) that the viewer is being blessed with an earth-shattering profundity. In fact it is nothing more profound than a reminder of something which has been presented in the cinema many times before, and presented with more artistry, subtley and ambiguity. I am being a bit cryptic to avoid giving it all away. Surprise is the one good thing about the ending and if I removed that, nothing good would remain.

The film has other flaws too, already discussed by other reviewers, but I give it 4 stars because I agree with some of the positive comments made.

I start by saying how sorry I feel for the Director, Nicolas Klotz. His name is the German cognate of "block" or "lump" and like his name that's what he delivers - a lump of celluloid intent on blocking any aspirations to aesthetic of philosophical appeal. It is distasteful to the highest magnitude. The comments by fellow reviewer greenforest56 from San Francisco are a good summary on this horrid film, in particular Greenforest's first lines.

By now I should have learnt my lesson with French films and the pretencions of music e.g. "Un Coeur en Hiver (A Heart in Winter)" For reasons only known to Napoleon they just can't pull it off. It seems as if the pretend auteurs need to inject some music to give their films a stamp of Gallic approval.

Watching the film and the making of was sheer torture - for reasons given by others. I'm not sure it could be improved but if it could the first thing to vanish would be the boring and annoying long takes. What was the idea of the over long take at the rave party? The director said he wanted it shown in a documentary style. But why? And what was the long shot of the railway line? Was it supposed to be a very sick subliminal metaphor for the track leading to Auschwitz? Maybe it was quite simply pathetic editing?

Klot's analogy or metaphor of modern day techno-fascism in comparison with the Gestapo beggars belief. What on earth was Elisabeth Perceval thinking of when she wrote this drivel? The comparison between illegal immigrants trying to access Europe and the Gestapo gassing trucks is truly bizarre. No matter that she talks about the technology used today to detect the sound of a heartbeat by immigrants hiding in trucks(hence the title) but to compare it with the technology devised by the Nazis to kill millions requires either a few bottles of wine or a perverse course on left bank Marxist tripe.

It's only when one analyses each of the themes that it falls apart like a cheap dress.

It was such a shame to see that fine actor Mathieu Amalric put his name to this truly awful film.

Lastly. This will be a film that the arty critics and teachers at film schools will simply adore. They will be able to talk and write forever on all the nuances, depth, texture and Mis En Scene. Avoid them and the film at all costs!

Points Minus 9.5. It would have been 10 but I always make an allowance for those who write the end credits.

This film led me on a journey, not one I would have willingly taken but in the end I was glad I stayed on board. It was painful, it was a little long but the acting, the filming and the message made it a positive experience for me.

Anyone who is looking for a "Feel Good" movie, don't watch La Question Humaine (Why did they have to change the title for the anglophone market?) A recent visit in Hiroshima was a similar experience. I felt very distressed at the end of the visit, but I was glad I hadn't ducked out.

I think this film has something to say for all Europeans. For me it's a stark reminder of why the EU was launched and why we still need it more than ever.

I'll start with what I liked about 'Heartbeat Detector'. It's poetical, discursive style is something I love in cinema when it's done well. I long for stories that break from the formulaic and say what they have to say while stretching the boundaries of cinematic story telling; 'Heartbeat Detector' is aiming for that. It's beautifully photographed too, it's washed out colours and florescent glare a study in disjointed alienation.

Oh, and there is some great acting going on too, but I'm going to have to get trite at this point, because I'm afraid it's all a wasted effort.

At heart this is a morality play, but it's lesson is a perversity, in that there is none at all. It's a meditation on the horrors on the Nazi death camps, that leads the protagonist to realise his role in firing employees in a downsizing European multi-national may equate to the culpability of Nazi functionaries involved in the slaughter of the death camps.

Many people will find this insulting, and it is, doubly so. Insulting to those who died in the Nazi death camps and insulting to victims whose deaths could be found comparable today.

A message to the film makers. Do you want to make a film about a man who slowly realises the banality of evil that lead to the death camps is still with us in the 21st century ? Perhaps ponder questions like why several million children in Africa die every year from diseases due to a lack of clean drinking water, while we in the West spend more than is needed to prevent this on the frivolity of bottled mineral water.

Instead how ironic under the banner of exploring awareness of social problems, the film makers show about as much social awareness as the aristocracy before the storming of the Bastille.

La question humaine is a difficult movie, not entertaining, but very rewarding. It gets slowly under your skin and makes you reflect about who you are, who we are, what our parents, have transmitted us generation after generation. Basically, it is a movie about transmission, about languages, about words that echo across time.

That's why I believe it is simplistic to say that Nicolas Klotz and scenarist Elizabeth Perceval are comparing the way companies are managed today to the way the shoah was "managed". They are much more subtle than that. What Elizabeth says in the interview which accompanies the DVD is something close to this: "When Simon is reading the technical report written during the war by Theodor Jüst, he is touched by the words used, the structure of the sentences, their cold, technical tones, of which he finds echoes in his own industrial psychologist language." In a similar vein, on wikipedia, you can find the following quote by Nicolas, in French, which says something similar. As Nicolas himself says, there is something hazy, "gazeux" about the film, about these "résurgences" from the past. Which, again, does not mean that industrial companies like SC Farb (reference the product used in gas chambers) are modern-day gas chambers...

There are many beautiful, touching, although painful moments in this movie. I think in particular of Lynn's account (Valerie Dreville) of Matthias Jüst, discovering when he was young the atrocities committed by his father. She says she was in love with the boy he once was. Then he had the courage to confront his father. As an older, powerful man, CEO of a large business unit, he seemed to have lost that kind courage.