BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO
Directed by: Peter Strickland
Written by: Peter Strickland
Starring: Toby Jones, Tonia Sotifopoulou, Antonio Mancino, Cosimo Fusco, and Susanna Capperllaro
Synopsis: A stuffy audio engineer is hired to record sound for an Italian giallo film which causes his life starts to deteriorate along with the movie.
I know most of you people
that regularly read this site might be tired of this, but I will never stop
loving movies that involve the recording or performing of music. When I heard
that there was going to be movie with Toby Jones as a sound engineer I knew I had to see it. If my Twitter feed is anything to
go by, it sure as hell was controversial. You either had people that loved it
or just completely hated it. As you might ascertain, I'm one of those people
that loved it. BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO is a subtle thriller that looks at the
often ego-driven creative process of film making through the eyes
of mild-mannered engineer that will make you question every frame of the movie
you just saw.
The movie starts with Gilderoy (Jones) getting hired by an Italian director, Giancarlo Santini, to do the sound design
for his movie, THE EQUESTRIAN VORTEX. Gilderoy was hired on because he's known for his nature documentary work. When he meets eccentric
producer Coraggio, he is informed that there will be no equestrian action, and
that this is a horror movie, which Gilderoy isn't comfortable with. Having to
record people smashing watermelons with hammers and crunching and ripping apart
vegetables to simulate various violent acts is not something Gilderoy signed up for but goes through it
anyway.
A particular point of contention for a lot of people I talked to was the repetitive scenes of Gilderoy . I
quite enjoyed actually seeing some of the creative and monotonous aspects of
doing sound for a movie as is depicted in BERBERIAN. Back in college, I
used to do some recordings myself along with some very terrible sampling for random music projects, so seeing
even what's a fictionalized depiction of recording was great. Seeing the ways
that Gilderoy tries to recreate a person drowning, getting hacked away, or a
witch getting a hot iron inserted into her vagina were equally funny and
disturbing. The numerous scenes in the control room with all of the knobs and
cables and notes are just so fascinating to me. What's even better is that with
each recording scene starts to show something more and more sinister if you
were paying attention properly.
I like to think this movie is a way to show the fact that a creative endeavor like a movie has a way of actually affecting you. In this instance there is a horror movie's constant but unseen presence and we start to see how being in this environment can negatively affect you. Adding to Gilderoy woes is the supporting cast of the Santini, Coraggio, and the revolving cast of
the actresses that Santini hires, sleeps with, and subsequently fires. They all
added a little something of a stress that seems to chip away at Gilderoy to a
mental and almost literal breaking point.
Part of the "fun" of the movie is picking up on the details. I
particularly enjoyed piecing together the pieces from the movie-within-the-movie. There is a point in the movie where everything just takes a turn
for the surreal. Things start to get
weirder to the point where you don't really know exactly what you're watching.
Actors are being tortured in the sound booth, and then Gilderoy all of the sudden
knows more Italian. I realize that everything that I'm seeing is very vague,
but I am trying to make sure I don't spoil anything, and I can assure you, this
is a movie you want to go in blind as much as you can.
Discussing the movie with
friends after the festival, I realized that this movie is very similar to
director David Lynch's MUHOLLAND DRIVE down to the fact that once the movie
ends, you realize that there's a definitive "turning" point in the
story. This movie requires repeat viewing rewards them with more details that
enrich this haunting story. I find any movie that deals with the unreliable
nature of memories and by that extension the notion of the "self"
fascinating. The fact that we have a movie that deals with this theme, throws
in a sound studio setting, and giving me a reason to research Italian Giallo
films makes this one of my favorite movies of this festival so far.
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