French filmmakers seem to veer toward the grandiose—like profoundly emotional plots and immeasurable risk-taking—especially in comparison to their American counterparts. Nicolas Klotz’s Heartbeat Detector (released as La Question Humaine in France), part thriller and part manifesto, exhibits this plunge into the epic and excessive quality of French cinema.
Artists often say that their works are most successful when they elicit polarizing reactions—forcing the audience to either love it or hate it. This may just be the case for Kubrick-esque Heartbeat Detector, a film seemingly destined to be adored by some and reviled by others. Its slightly cheeky American title can’t compare to the original, The Human Question, which captures the essence of the story much more faithfully.
Based on La Question Humaine, a book by François Emmanuel, the film centers on the mysteries of the corporate world and the increasing sterilization of society in the face of a past evil: the Holocaust. Simon Kessler (Mathieu Amalric of the Oscar-nominated The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) is a psychologist working in the human resources department of an enigmatically named chemical corporation, SC Farb. Simon, a charismatic and cool-headed urban professional, was responsible for successfully executing mass layoffs for the German company’s branch in France. His goal, as the film describes, for this “new, pure, technical generation,” is Orwellian: “Making them soldiers, knights of the business world, highly competitive subalterns.”
But things (surprise, surprise!) do not go exactly as planned. Simon uncovers information linking the corporation to a highly disturbing role in the Holocaust. Simon’s starch-white professional world slowly begins to fall apart, as he begins to question the humanity of the corporate world—or rather, its inhumanity. Here is where “The Human Question” factors in: where does the fire of human life, of emotion and tenderness, pleasure and pain, figure into the unemotional detachment of the corporate world?
The film is ambitious, a full 141 minutes of angst that will drive most of the audience nearly to madness. And yet, it is riveting and heart-wrenching all the while, and awkward and silent when it needs to be. The audience may learn to appreciate the excruciating minutes it takes one character to wash his hands under running water, or the uncomfortable moments spent observing the face of a self-doubting interviewee. The style is at once opulent and strangely minimalist.
Every aspect of the film is expressive: the camerawork represents mental state, for example, as Simon’s breakdown is represented by a shaking lens. The soundtrack is mostly soft folk-rock, juxtaposed with Schubert (for the melancholy characters) or corrosive techno (for the businessmen). The actors have a strange way of looking directly at the camera lens, evoking Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, yet there are essential differences between this movie and Clockwork: namely, that Heartbeat Detector is entirely un-funny, and entirely unambiguous. The message is black-and-white, the connection between the inhumanity of WWII and the corporate sector constantly verbalized. This clarity may be the movie’s greatest flaw, for there is no question, exactly, but rather a manifesto-like statement.
Nonetheless, the film is haunting and beautiful. Amalric, simultaneously open and elusive, is a joy to watch on screen—as he draws more and more into his emotions, the audience follows willingly. Heartbeat Detector is for those who go to the movies for an experience, rather than a re-hashed plot and a happy conclusion. It is above all a film created to jolt the humanity within us to respond to an increasingly sterilized world.