Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbeat Detector, 18 Aug 2008
This film is riveting and utterly engrossing. Upcoming Bond baddie Matthieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) gets a film to himself here - already a reason to watch - and the film that he gets is a chilling, provocative look at corporate life that will make you think twice about putting on your suit to go into the office again. The way that Nazi Germany creeps into the picture is terrifying. A staggering piece of cinema.
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5 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Earnest moral judgments don't make up for a lack of dramatic tension. But Michael Lonsdale is fine, 25 Jul 2008
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 thick-headedly 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 Simon's 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 example, the Farb Quartet. Says one character, "The Farb Quartet brings back bad memories...take four cards: a king, a queen, a jack and a six. Or a king of spades, a ten of clubs, a six of diamonds and a three of hearts. You can't win. You have to throw in your cards. I'm sure you can guess the cards: a CEO, a secretary, a sales rep and a chemist. Music doesn't tolerate hierarchy. The Farb quartet was a disaster." "Was Mr. Just the violinist? How did he play?" asks Simon. Says the executive he's talking to, "He was extremely tense, obsessively exact. He was so exact he stifled the music."
Now that hooked me. Then it turns out to be a bit of clever dialogue evidently no one wanted to cut. The Farb Quartet is irrelevant except as a dramatic device. And that's boring. 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. I wound up not caring much for Simon. Michael Lonsdale, however, is a fine actor. It was almost worth seeing the movie to watch him.
The DVD is bare bones. It looks just fine except for some of the nighttime scenes when little can be made out.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Enigmatic and Haunting, 2 Nov 2009
If only for the masterful performance of Amalrik, this film is well worth seeing. Playing the character of a corporate psychologist in charge
of the Human Resources Department, and responsible, among other tasks, for the streamlining and restructuring of their personnel (read sack
and dismiss), he dominates the whole film, with his spare body language, intense gaze and ghost like complexion. The storyline is almost
irrelevant - a shadowy intrigue in which the past of a trio of corporate executive slowly unravels and the hero's personal life and certainties
deteriorate.
The ideological point made here is that the corporate policy of retrenchment and efficiency buildup (Amalrik as the
in house psychologist organizes seminars in which participants are made to go beyond their limits) is a mirror image
or counterpoint of the Nazi culling and elimination of unwanted people. As such it may be a little overstated but the slow, haunting pace of
the film, the sometimes frozen images (the recurring image of the chemical plant chimney stacks), the way Amalrik seems to decompose as he delves
into the accusations and counter attacks of the "villains" is spellbinding.
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