LA QUESTION HUMAINE (HEARTBEAT DETECTOR)
France, 2007, 141 minutes, Colour.
Mathieu Amalric, Michael Lonsdale, Lou Castel.
Directed by Nicholas Klotz.
Director Nicholas Klotz and his partner, writer, Elizabeth Perceval, have made several fiction features as well as documentaries. They draw on both skills in this seriously fascinating narrative with philosophical and moral texts and subtexts. The film is based on a novel by Francois Emmanuel.
The voiceover is by Simon Kessler (Mathiew Amalric), a psychologist in a large German manufacturing company. While genial in many ways (though his emotional life and social behaviour is in something of a mess), he is efficient at work, uses roll play techniques to motivate executives to make them more competitive and has worked out very strict criteria for retrenchment of over a thousand employees. He seems to be the very model of the successful middle-aged career man.
He is asked, confidentially, by one of the bosses to make a report on the CEO (Michael Lonsdale) whose behaviour and moods have worried many of the staff. In the meantime, the CEO is making international deals with other countries, including Japan. Simon notes that the CEO and some other significant people played for some time in a company quartet but broke up suddenly. He uses an investigation into the quartet and reviving it as a cover for his study of the CEO. He interviews him, also another quartet member as well as the secretary and the CEO’s wife.
This indicates for the first part of what is quite a long film that the study of the human questions (though ‘question’ is a limited word about interrogations whereas, as the subtitles indicate, ‘issue’ is a far better word), human issues today are illustrated in the structure and life of global companies.
However, as Simon’s investigations continue (and the CEO tells him that he knows he is under suspicion), deeper issues emerge. Both the instigator of the investigation and the CEO have links through their fathers to the Nazi past and French collaboration. When Simon receives a series of anonymous letters about this, they lead him to an elderly laid-off man (Lou Castel) who knows many secrets.
It is here that the audience has to pay real attention as Simon tells us that he also has dreams about these issues and the finale seems to be dream but a revelation about the past, about chemicals to kill Jews, about trucks driving through the towns to deposit corpses, about the children who witnessed their fathers issuing these orders, and about a quartet which seemed to play to the victims before their deaths.
With Simon having to look into his own treatment of workers in the company, the film makes the point about 20th century inhumanity finding a new global and corporate outlet in the 21st century.
The dialogue is particularly dense and packed many times throughout the film. Many of the takes are edited so that the effect is quite prolonged, the audience gazing at close-ups of characters, of interviews, of behaviour at ‘rave’ parties of the staff which shows another side of the executives.
Finally, after the quartet plays and we are trying to absorb the ‘questions humaines’, the screen goes dark and some minutes of final commentary about the past and the present, the continuity of these issues and of human behaviour, good and bad, bring the film to a serious end.
1.The impact of the drama, social insights, philosophical insights, perspective on history?
2.A literary adaptation, the dense dialogue, the depth? The final speech on the blackened screen?
3.The contemporary story, French industry, German industry and collaboration? The interiors of the factory, exteriors? Apartments, streets, clubs? Mansions? The contrast with the later scenes in the country? The concert? The village, the café, the exteriors? The musical score?
4.The title, the translation of ‘question’ as issues? The Holocaust and inhumanity? Participation in causing the deaths of millions, decision-making? Suffering and death? The children of the officials, the consequences? The 21st century parallel with inhumanity and industry, production, products? Retrenching and methods?
5.Simon Kessler, his voice-over? Age, background, personal life, his relationship with his girlfriend, talking with her in the café, wanting her to sing? The flirting with the girl in the office? Their presence at the rave parties? His drinking, collapsing in the street? His life as a mess? His work, his self-assessment of his work? Psychology, counselling, therapy, role-plays, the criteria for retrenchment, personal motivation for the executives? His personal involvement or not?
6.The interview with the executive, serious, intense? Confidential? His mission? The CEO and the reports about his behaviour, his secretary’s concern? Simon using the cover about the investigation of the orchestra for his research? His visit to the member of the quartet, the questions? His suspecting him of the anonymous letters? The question of the purpose of the orchestra in the factory? Its membership and the CEO part of it, the secretary?
7.The CEO, his interview with Simon, his work, background, character, his decision-making, the jobs and the Japanese? Knowing about Simon’s mission? His talk with Simon about his efficiency in the company? Sowing doubts in Simon’s mind?
8.Simon, the interview with the secretary, the discussion, the revelations about the orchestra?
9.The women in his life, relationship, dependence, the reaction of the girl in the office?
10.The letters, suspicions, the discovery of the old man in the town, his waiting for him, sleeping in the café, watching, asking him questions?
11.The old man, his character, his story, in the town, his being dismissed from the factory? The story of the past, the two officers, their work, the trucks with the dead, the music? The boys watching? Their inheritance, the moral issues, each having power over the other because of their knowledge?
12.Simon and his dream, reality? The orchestra playing – and the old man, Simon in the audience?
13.The final reflection on the meaning of the film, the voice-over and the darkened screen?
