La question humaine (2007) Reviews

• Sins of the fathers, sins of the sons

  Chris Knipp2008-02-12

  In this complicated philosophical thriller and meditation on modern varieties of evil, Simon Kessler (Matthieu Amalric), who narrates (echoing the source book by François Emmanuel), is a corporate psychologist working in the "human resources" department of the French branch of SC Farb, a German petrochemical company. A high-ranking official, Karl Rose (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), assigns Kessler the delicate task of investigating the mental state of company CEO Matthias Just (Michael Lonsdale). Kessler meets Just on the pretense of working up a plan for employee musical groups; years ago Just himself was part of a string quartet made up of staff members. (At 77 Lonsdale is still impressive, immense; to see him and the brilliant Amalric, 43, play off one another is worth the price of admission.) Just appears to be coming apart, yet he seems tired rather than crazy, and there is nothing specific. But what Kessler discovers, in Just, in the company, in the past of some of the employees, and in himself, leads him to come apart himself. This is a cold, dark-suited world inhabited by expressionless but dangerous men and women who smile, but bite back. The cinematography is of a chilly beauty. Music is a powerful thematic element. Schubert is associated with Matthias Just. American-educated French musician Syd Matters composed for the film. To unwind, Kessler and colleagues go to raves and, dance wildly to techno, and come unglued. The strobe lights' flashing seems a metaphor for the dirty secrets peeking out of hiding. Music torments Monsieur Just. He has never recovered from the death of a child and he comes unglued listening to an old tape of the company quartet playing Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' when Kessler visits his house. The calm of classical music seems false. Some of its master composers come from the land of the Nazis. Despite the cute English title, in French this film is called 'La question humaine,' 'The Human Question.' Klotz, whose partner Elizabeth Persival collaborated on the adaptation, is working in the same mode of Claire Denis in The Intruder/L'Intrus and Arnaud des Pallieres in 'Adieu,' films that focus up close on highly culpable individuals but consider vast social issues and historical wrongs which they explore in challengingly fractured ways but in a language that is visually and aurally rich. Denis' "hero" was associated with various illegalities, including illegal organ sales. Adieu considers questionable business practices and the repression of immigrants. Heartbeat Detector gestures meaningfully toward apparently French executives' relationship with the Shoah. A little over halfway through the film Just delivers his bombshell to Kessler. First he points out that he knows Karl Rose (not his real name; it was Kraus) is having him investigated. He points out that in the recent company overhaul that eliminated over half the employees, Kessler played a big role in deciding who was to be axed. Then he explains Rose/Kraus's actual origins. Letters and papers begin to be passed back and forth. Some of them are in the hands of Just, recuperating from a dubious "suicide" attempt. There is a close examination of a German "shipment" whose passengers never survived in which someone's father was closely involved. The euphemisms of Nazi extermination where people are "pieces" or "units" seem not so far from the language of corporate "restructuring." Has the mentality of the Third Reich reformatted itself in western European industrial society? As Kessler comes apart, he loses his protective jargon. His "investigation" which Just called "une machination" (a plot) organized by Karl Rose, has turned into a probing of the human condition and the tentacles of the twenty-first century have been traced back into the middle of the twentieth. At its best 'Heartbeat Detector'/'La question humaine,' which is a little long, is as challenging and haunting as L'Intrus and Adieu and even more powerful and contemporary. At certain moments it seems to be lecturing us, but it also finds time to be fractured and funny. Presented as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, New York, February 29-March 9, 2008. US distributor: New Yorker Films.

• Themes Belonging in Literature, Not A Film

  Sturgeon542013-03-28

  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.

• A potentially interesting movie, undone by the self-aware earnestness of the director and writer

  Terrell-42008-07-31

  Here's a movie with a serious theme, undone by the earnestness of the director and writer. We know how serious the theme is because it involves Nazi death camps, and not just as a reminder of what humans are capable of, but as an odd metaphor for humanity's current business conditions. "Did you know," says one character, "we don't have poor people anymore? Only people on modest incomes. We no longer talk of "issues," such as social issues, but "problems" that our specialists split up into a series of technical details. For each one, they'll find the optimum solution." That may or may not be true, depending on one's own social enthusiasms, but Nicolas Klotz, the director, and Elisabeth Perceval, the screenwriter, seem to be making the case that corporate downsizing is the moral equivalent of Nazi extermination actions. The parallel is not only grotesquely naive, but thickheadedly trivializes some of humanity's worst atrocities. One has to admire, and I mean this seriously, their earnestness, but their earnestness leads them into the fatal flaw of some artists: That their passion for social justice equates as artistic talent. The Human Question (the English title, Heartbeat Detector, is confusing) gives us a good start. A corporate psychologist at SCFarb, a giant German company with a major Parisian subsidiary, is called upon by Karl Rose, the firm's deputy manager, to secretly report on the mental health of SCFarb's head, Mathias Just (Michael Lonsdale). Our man, Simon Kessler (Mathieu Amalric), is told that Just has been behaving erratically. Simon is given this assignment because of how effective and dedicated he had been in his role during a major downsizing. Simon gets more than he bargained for. He discovers something called the Farb Quartet, which several years ago played for employees. Just was the violinist. This gives him cover to meet with and evaluate Just to discuss the possibility of a Farb employee symphony. After two meetings and a visit to Just's home, it's clear to Simon that Just is exhausted, in the midst of some sort of crises and is racked by a deep sadness. And then Just tells Simon he knows all about Simon's assignment...and that Karl Rose was a child from a Nazi program to increase the numbers of Aryan children. Then there are the letters Just gives him, letters that talk about the role of Just's father at a death camp. This is followed by anonymous letters Simon begins to get which artfully combine sections of Simons recommendations for downsizing and old Nazi instructions for killing people. And on it goes for nearly two-and-a-half hours. There is no drama to speak of, just lots of long takes, long monologues and long scenes. There are lots of secondary issues that move around without resolution. It takes 80 minutes to get to where tension in Simon's assignment starts to build and where we think there might be something wrong in the relationship between Just and Rose. It takes 95 minutes to get to the point of the movie...activities at Nazi extermination camps and the lack of emotion about how people are treated today. "The business world is unforgiving," says Just. "How do you reconcile 'the human factor' with the company's need to make money?" Some viewers become angry or sarcastic when faced with movies like this. My emotions are sadness and boredom. Sadness because the serious intent of the movie's creators exceeds their abilities. Boredom, because no matter how earnest the intent of a movie, a movie's first responsibility is to engage the viewer at some meaningful level, even if that level is based only on technique. For me, Heartbeat Detector missed that requirement, especially at the level of technique. But in an unintended bit of irony, we also figure out that being a company psychologist must require all the supple morals of a physician who assists in "robust" interrogations of prisoners. Michael Lonsdale, however, is a fine actor. It was almost worth seeing the movie to watch him.

• too many messages, badly written

  greenforest562008-06-18

  First, this film is very morally flawed. It equates rounding up illegal aliens and deporting them with rounding up Jews and gassing them. This is, itself, a moral perversion. Second, there are too many 'moral' messages. The director/producers tried to address too many issues: corporate fascism, impersonal government technocracy, the murder of the Jews, illegal aliens, etc. Rather than make one point well, they made many points poorly. Third, it is badly written, produced, and directed. You could eliminate the protagonist's girlfriend altogether and not only not harm the movie but actually improve it. There were scenes, like the rave, that made no sense at all. There were other relationships, like the protagonists involvement with the blonde, that also made no sense. In other places, character development is flawed as is plot development. In all, you could cut over an hour from this film and have a better film. Example: there is one excruciatingly awful singing episode that you sit through thinking the director would not torture you with this unless it was important. Alas, it is merely torture.... And that is the great weakness of this film. There are many scenes that do not enlighten, inform, educate, entertain or move the plot forward. They seem to be there for no reason at all. The producer's thinking seems that the more you ignore plot development and dramatic tension the more 'artsy' your film is. If painfully boring is great art this picture belongs in the Louvre. The pretense of a 'moral message' is no excuse for bad film making. This film is over rated at 6 stars.

• I wish more people would see this.

  dead475482009-01-25

  A highly intelligent, interesting film that does a great job of showing the impact that the ripples of Nazi Germany still have on the modern world. It's half a study of that, half a character study of Mathieu Amalric's character, a psychologist for a large, anonymous company. This character is completely breaking down throughout the film as a result of living in such a shady, paranoia filled society. I have to admit that there is some stuff that went over my head. There's a subplot involving an almost underground society of these business types who take these boats to a place where they pop drugs and rave. I'm sure that the whole thing has a symbolic meaning but for me it just provided a stunning catharsis and more depth into Amarlic's character. His performance in the film is absolutely stunning. It's a very quiet, subtle portrayal that is one of the most...calculated performances I've seen in quite a while. You can tell that he put so much thought into every move that the character makes. Every turn of the body, slight movement of the eyes, it's all important for the performance. But the genius of him as an actor is that you realize he is putting importance into all of those moments, but he is so great at putting himself into the character that you just think it's important for the character and don't think about the man acting as the character until after the film is over. A very intelligent, complex performance in an intelligent, complex film.