The ZDF is currently airing an unusual and more intense thriller from France from 2021 due to the Olympics, which MeinMMO author Schuhmann wants to recommend. He says “Black Box – Dangerous Truth” is one of the cleverest and most exciting thrillers of recent years, shedding light on a fascinating field that hardly anyone addresses: acoustics and aviation technology.
This is how Black Box begins: An airplane with 300 passengers crashes. There are no survivors.
Our protagonist Mathieu works as an acoustician for a French agency that is specifically responsible for investigating such accidents. Mathieu is an eccentric misfit and so good at his job that he gets on everyone’s nerves because colleagues and superiors do not hear what he believes he hears. “He’s a bit crazy,” they think, he hears “ghost noises.” Always overinterpreting everything. A bit high-strung.
Because he just had an argument with his boss, he is not allowed to participate in this “most important accident of his generation” and is sulking. Meanwhile, his wife, Noémie, is advancing her career, just switching from the government to the private sector, and getting a lucrative job at precisely the company that she has just declared safe.
They have a mutual friend, the head of a security company who also works in aviation and who helped her get the job. Yes, in France there are plenty of connections. That’s the only way to work in the excessively strict and annoying safety regulations reasonably. To be successful, one must navigate the social landscape well. Matthew is not good at that; he can listen, but only to stuttering engine noises and the black box, the recordings from the flight recorder; otherwise, he constantly gets into trouble with everyone.
When Mathieu goes to work the next day, his boss has disappeared. He has to step in and investigate the crash. After much fiddling and tinkering with an analysis program, he hears from the black box “Allahu Akbar” from the cockpit – so, a terrorist attack?
A thriller that would be hard to imagine in the USA
What makes the film so special? As viewers, we consistently follow Mathieu, an unusual protagonist for a thriller, who has nothing of a rugged thriller hero. His area of expertise is listening, careful listening, and what he hears just doesn’t add up and drives him mad.
Moreover, everyone around him wants to dismiss the case as quickly as possible. The flight attendant wasn’t paying attention, a terrorist got into the cockpit and caused the plane to crash. It shouldn’t happen. There’s nothing to be done: human error and terrorism.
But Mathieu starts to dig deeper and faces fierce resistance at every step; even his own wife quickly thinks he’s crazy and overly upset.
A thriller without heroes
“Black Box” is a thriller that would hardly be made in the USA – the tension comes from an “honest puzzle”; every step is logical and invites viewers to guess along. More and more information is being decoded from the distorted radio transmissions, and the picture of what really happened is becoming clearer.
This is intelligent and highly suspenseful, with a coherent, exciting resolution. Here, thoroughly normal people become heroes because they do not take the easy path but the thorny one, where every step hurts and is connected with social exclusion and disadvantages. The perspective on the characters keeps changing: we see how Mathieu sees his wife in a new light time and again.
- Can he trust his wife as a protagonist? Is she the loving, cuddly wife or a careerist who will do anything for her own success?
- Can we as viewers even trust Mathieu and his “hearing” if no one else does?
- Can we trust our own senses at all?
Why is the film unknown? Despite 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is practically unknown in this country.
The film has somehow been unlucky – even now at its Free TV premiere. It was supposed to air this Monday evening, July 6, at 10:15 PM on ZDF – but due to the Olympics, it only aired on Tuesday in the slot where the Monday film is usually repeated, so after midnight.
“Black Box – Dangerous Truth” is also a pretty dumb generic title for such a strong thriller that truly deserves more viewers and listeners.
You can still watch the thriller until September 5 in the ZDF media library. It’s free (via ZDF).
ZDF sometimes struggles to schedule its best thrillers in a way that they will actually be seen by someone. Last year, we reviewed an excellent thriller from Germany; ZDF had also treated it rather neglectfully: ZDF airs one of the best thrillers of the last few years at 1 AM: Here’s how you can watch it for free
