Black Box (2012) Boíte Noire
IMDb meta-data is 2h and 9m, rated 7.2 by 17,000 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery.
DNA: Gallic.
Verdict: Unusual.
Tagline: ‘Ear that?’
Another French movie, another ear, this time on an acoustic analyst who works on the flight recorders from plane crashes, of which there seem to be many to keep him busy. This hero is a super nerd, yet even so he has an attractive wife who seems to love him. Strange. Nerd boy is so introverted he folds up, the more so and often because of his acutely sensitive hearing that makes a reception excruciating, but it means he can hear a change of pitch in background engine noise on a flight recorder.
I wrote an undergraduate thesis on regulatory capture, and that is what we have here. The regulator works closely with the regulated, so closely that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. His wife works for a manufacturer of airliners, and she is personally dynamic and socially adept as well as technically competent, unlike Nerd King who sits all day in a dark room listening to engine noises, she wheels and deals.
The technical aspects are in the forefront, so unlike Hollywood, and these hold interest but as the aged and redoubtable André Dussollier (first credit 1970, and latest 2024) says, ‘with those toys you can make a recording say anything you want,’ and that seems to be what happened in the main event. In reality André would have been pushed into retirement years ago in any public service.
Of course, there is a deep and dark conspiracy that does not involve Boeing, but one thinks of 737MAX nonetheless, to approve a plane before it is foolproof. And a fool proves it.
The forensic detail certainly held my interest, though it was hard to take seriously the mismatched couple. Even harder to take was the disappearance of the chief acoustic technician, played superbly by Olivier Rabourdin, in the middle of the investigation and no one seems to notice or care, for some time.
Good to know that greed, corruption, and stupidity are not limited to the Anglo-Saxon world, but sad to know that screen writers can only grasp bad will, and nothing more complicated.
P.S. there are scores of films that use that title.
