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.

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.

This ship wreck of a movie has got to be one of the most boring, irritating and absurd films I've ever watched. It ranks up there with only a couple others that I almost walked out on many, many years ago.No plot, no character development, irritating music and camera angles, bombastic dialogs, idiotic sequences and pointless scenes that drag on and on and on....I'm a grown man with a keen appreciation for art in all its forms, and do not consider myself averse to artistic, profound, philosophical movies, quite the opposite. But this is none of that. As I painfully watched, boredom turned into outright anger at the thought of wasting two hours of my life with this rubbish. And believe me, I've been known to waste some time on silly past times! This is just too much. I'm almost embarrassed, no, worse, incensed that I sat through it. Do yourselves a favor and avoid this load of you-know-what at all cost.

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.