ledoux-laurent

Sadly the reviewer did not watch properly the movie : 1. Noiret/Dandieu does not arrive "just in time" to see his family killed : he imagineswhat has happened (perhaps one or two days before; unclear).

2. The girl is his daughter; not Romy/Clara's I did not plan to write more but I am forced to write at least 1O lines (silly rule).

This is a movie I first saw when I was 12 or 13.

It made a lasting impression on me.

I love its pace, the acting (Noiret in particular), Romy's beauty, charm and accent.

And the music by François de Roubaix.

As other reviewers have written it before, this movie is not without flaws. No need to rehearse them again here. Despite this, or if you can see beyond them, you might be deeply touched by some scenes. Personally, I will never forget how Schmuel takes the hand of Bruno at the end of the movie. You just see their hands pressing each other. That's all you need to find enough strength in order to carry on, despite all the flaws, all the atrocities around them, around us, despite Farmiga's desperate cry under the rain. For better or worse, this simple shot of one second or two has been engraved in my mind and will stay with me.

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.