In the Berberian Sound Studio, Toby Jones plays a milquetoast sound engineer whose latest assignment is The Equestrian Vortex, a Mario Bava-styled horror film set in a Dario Argento-sounding riding academy. When in Rome circa 1970, Gilderoy (Jones) is emotionally brutalized by the film’s heartless producer, wooed by its misguided director, intrigued by its voluptuous leading lady, all while stabbing cabbages and mutilating melons as befits a Foley artist working on an Italian slasher. The clever angle British director Peter Strickland employs show us nothing of the filmed carnage Gilderoy views while composing his soundtrack, but let’s us hear it instead, using our imaginations to conjure up the nasty off-screen imagery. In addition, he photographs Gilderoy’s tools of the trade—Nagras and Revoxes and Sennheisers—with loving close-ups, letting his camera linger lustily on the lines of the colorful sound charts and the cryptic timing sheets. It’s all rather artistic and quite involving… to a point. And then things start to unravel as—as we critics are prone to say—“the lines between fantasy and reality start to blur.” What that typically means is that it’s not clear what the heck is happening to our mild-mannered hero, who can’t even get reimbursed for his intercontinental flight (the studio’s bored secretary languidly tortures him with bureaucracy). Is it all just in Gilderoy’s mind? Is it the present, the past, or the future? That kind of thing. It’s too bad, because things could have—as we critics are also prone to say—“built to a terrifying climax.” Instead, Berberian Sound Studio remains a bit of a head scratcher that probably sounded better on paper.
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(c) 2015 David N. Butterworth
butterworthdavidn@gmail.com
