just watch it!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I understand why some people object to this movie's equating the plight of illegal immigrants and exploited factory workers with the Shoah (the Holocaust).The Jewish people are at this moment at greater risk than they have been since the Germans exterminated them in Europe during World War II. They are surrounded by hordes of brutal, ruthless monsters no less dedicated to their destruction than the Germans were 70 years ago.But it's worse now, because they are effectively all alone against a force thousands of times larger than they are (billions against a few million), with NOBODY on their side, not even their former official "Protectors", the British.During the Shoah, most civilized countries supported the Jews' right to exist (in theory, at least); but now the whole world prefers the Palestinians, whose declared aim is the total destruction of Israel. Israel's only remaining friends - the Americans - currently seem more interested in courting Israel's enemies than in insuring Israel's survival.Anybody who says the nation Israel is not the same as the Jewish people is either criminally deluded or a liar. Israel's enemies hate it because it's Jewish. Period. If they could wipe out the Jews all over the world they'd do it gleefully, but Israel is a much more convenient target, an isolated, vulnerable surrogate for the whole.In the light of this alarming situation, to compare France's arresting illegal immigrants to Germany's systematically murdering Jewish children is appalling. Nevertheless... I was bowled over by this movie.It is a deceptively powerful movie - deceptive because it seems to amble so slowly and randomly toward its conclusion; powerful because it makes old news new and vitally important. Instead of cheapening the Shoah, for me it made that horror realer than I thought possible after a long lifetime of learning about it.I DON'T think the current plight of illegal immigrants (or Palestinians, who are a particularly rapacious sort of illegal immigrant) is anything like the Jews' plight during the war, but this movie doesn't force me to accept that absurdity. It makes what was done to the Jews real, and it strengthens my commitment to Israel's survival rather than diluting it.

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.

I'll start with what I liked about 'Heartbeat Detector'. It's poetical, discursive style is something I love in cinema when it's done well. I long for stories that break from the formulaic and say what they have to say while stretching the boundaries of cinematic story telling; 'Heartbeat Detector' is aiming for that. It's beautifully photographed too, it's washed out colours and florescent glare a study in disjointed alienation.Oh, and there is some great acting going on too, but I'm going to have to get trite at this point, because I'm afraid it's all a wasted effort.At heart this is a morality play, but it's lesson is a perversity, in that there is none at all. It's a meditation on the horrors on the Nazi death camps, that leads the protagonist to realise his role in firing employees in a downsizing European multi-national may equate to the culpability of Nazi functionaries involved in the slaughter of the death camps.Many people will find this insulting, and it is, doubly so. Insulting to those who died in the Nazi death camps and insulting to victims whose deaths could be found comparable today.A message to the film makers. Do you want to make a film about a man who slowly realises the banality of evil that lead to the death camps is still with us in the 21st century ? Perhaps ponder questions like why several million children in Africa die every year from diseases due to a lack of clean drinking water, while we in the West spend more than is needed to prevent this on the frivolity of bottled mineral water.Instead how ironic under the banner of exploring awareness of social problems, the film makers show about as much social awareness as the aristocracy before the storming of the Bastille.

I start by saying how sorry I feel for the Director, Nicolas Klotz. His name is the German cognate of "block" or "lump" and like his name that's what he delivers - a lump of celluloid intent on blocking any aspirations to aesthetic of philosophical appeal. It is distasteful to the highest magnitude. The comments by fellow reviewer greenforest56 from San Francisco are a good summary on this horrid film, in particular Greenforest's first lines.By now I should have learnt my lesson with French films and the pretencions of music e.g. "Un Coeur en Hiver (A Heart in Winter)" For reasons only known to Napoleon they just can't pull it off. It seems as if the pretend auteurs need to inject some music to give their films a stamp of Gallic approval.Watching the film and the making of was sheer torture - for reasons given by others. I'm not sure it could be improved but if it could the first thing to vanish would be the boring and annoying long takes. What was the idea of the over long take at the rave party? The director said he wanted it shown in a documentary style. But why? And what was the long shot of the railway line? Was it supposed to be a very sick subliminal metaphor for the track leading to Auschwitz? Maybe it was quite simply pathetic editing? Klot's analogy or metaphor of modern day techno-fascism in comparison with the Gestapo beggars belief. What on earth was Elisabeth Perceval thinking of when she wrote this drivel? The comparison between illegal immigrants trying to access Europe and the Gestapo gassing trucks is truly bizarre. No matter that she talks about the technology used today to detect the sound of a heartbeat by immigrants hiding in trucks(hence the title) but to compare it with the technology devised by the Nazis to kill millions requires either a few bottles of wine or a perverse course on left bank Marxist tripe.It's only when one analyses each of the themes that it falls apart like a cheap dress.It was such a shame to see that fine actor Mathieu Amalric put his name to this truly awful film.Lastly. This will be a film that the arty critics and teachers at film schools will simply adore. They will be able to talk and write forever on all the nuances, depth, texture and Mis En Scene. Avoid them and the film at all costs!Points Minus 9.5. It would have been 10 but I always make an allowance for those who write the end credits.