La question humaine

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 really did want to appreciate this movie for tackling a series of monumental subjects - corporate dehumanization, guilt by association (especially concerning the Holocaust), Orwellian destruction of meaningful language, and the fallibility of psychoanalysis. However, watching this made me realize why the similarly dense subject material from novelists like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon rarely make it to the big screen is that they are much too diffuse, internal, and cerebral to even attempt in the plot-action-event world of film. I love film, and I love ideas, but all good film (even the most arty and pretentious) is about action first and ideas second. This film starts with the ideas and never lets the characters out from under them. A movie should never be about words, just as a novel should never have directions for camera angles.

I can't make a conclusive evaluation of whether I loved it or hated it, so I give it a 5 out of 10. It fails in doing the impossible, so I have to give it some credit. This movie is a prime example of why some novels should never be made into films.

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.

This is an interesting movie. The pace is slow, and the subject is painful, so it takes some effort to watch it from end to end. But in the end, it's worth it.

The music is very effective in inducing empathy with the main character, who's going through a life-changing crisis.

The main point is that today's corporate speak is dehumanizing ('units' to designate workers, 'efficiency', 'objectives'), in the same way as the Nazi's ruthless technical language of death was. Language can be a tool of destruction with a clean conscience.

Not perfect - a bit over-obvious sometimes. Also, the people speak like books, which, for me, induced a distance and made suspension of disbelief harder. Good acting though.

I last saw Mathieu Amalric as Jean-Do in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Winner of a César for that performance and two others, he is an accomplished actor. He displays his considerable skills in this film, which has him in the role of a psychologist who must interpret words and actions of others.

He is charged with assessing the mental state of the company CEO, Mathias Jüst, played brilliantly by Michael Lonsdale, who has two César nominations himself, and a BAFTA nomination for the 1973 version of The Day of the Jackal. This occurs soon after the company undergoes a massive downsizing.

The verbal give and take between the two was captivating. It became really interesting when Jüst sprung upon him that he knew he was being investigated, and gave information the reached back to the Third Reich.

The involvement of the principles in the extermination of Jews was reveled in a way that was similar to the discussion of the reduction of employees in the company. People were referred to as loads or units in each case, not as humans.

The inhuman language of extermination becomes the inhuman language of business, and the children of the Reich are left to deal with their father's sins.

Powerful.