Heartbeat Detector (aka La
Question Humaine/2007/French/New Yorker DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: C+
Nicolas
Klotz’s Heartbeat Detector (2007) is
a well-acted, ambitious drama about a corporation with a dark secret in its
past that could cause it to unravel after over a half-century. Mathieu Amalric plays a company investigator
who finds himself in between two feuding higher-ups; including one (Michael
Lonsdale) who tries to appeal to the investigator that he is being conspired against.
Needless
to say, it is a no-brainer guess that the company was involved in the Holocaust
and seems a little late in the game to be telling such a story, though it dos
not necessarily trivialize that event.
The acting is top notch, yet the film never goes far enough in its
subject matter and that stops it from being potentially great. Elisabeth Perceval’s screenplay (from the
Francois Emmanuel book) is well-written, yet the impact is not what it could
have been and the film just ends. Sadly,
the story told reflects a reality that certain companies (like Bayer) cannot
come to terms with their past participation in those ugly events. It is never too soon to deal with that.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.66 X 1 is well shot and nicely framed throughout, but this transfer
is a little soft and that effects both depth and detail. Color can be a bit muted, but editing is
good. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is not
much better than the 2.0 version, stretching the sound a bit. The actual recoding is not bad and we wonder
if DTS would have helped. The only extra
is the original theatrical trailer.
- Nicholas Sheffo