Review of Berberian Sound Studio (2012) by Mike T — 20 Sep 2012

Richly textured and nigh unparsable, Berberian Sound Studio has the terrifying specificity of dreams. In it, Toby Jones plays a mild British sound editor named Gilderoy, who travels to Italy to work on the post-production sound of a giallo horror film. The plot of Berberian does not extend much further than this. In place of plot, we watch a magic lantern show of Gilderoy's work, as he dutifully - and eventually, less dutifully - supplies the squishy pulverizations and clotted cleaves that will accompany unseen, offscreen gore. I think one can assume based on the evidence at hand that by the end of the film (and the film within the film), Gilderoy goes quite completely insane; but then, I cannot say with any certainty that he was not insane before Berberian Sound Studio even begins. If a man goes goes mad in a sound studio and no one hits record, does he make a noise?

The first film I've seen at TIFF in 2012 that was made and screened on 35mm film, Berberian Sound Studio is set in the 1970s and is as intense a reminder of the velvety, subtle nuance of film has one could hope to find in the digital age. It is dedicated to the analog art form to the point of being completely fetishistic, and the majority of Berberian is less a narrative than a gradually unfolding series of tone poems of reels unspooling, "Silencio!" signs blaring blood red, and projection beams staring unwinkingly into the camera. The Berberian Sound Studio as envisioned in the film is little better than a cave, with objects falling so quickly into shadow that one must nearly spend the film squinting. I am hard-pressed to recall a better-photographed motion picture in recent memory. The physical look of Berberian Sound Studio, coupled with its period-specific sense of montage, creates a powerful, delightful sense of eerie foreboding, even if the events onscreen could scarcely be described as anything other than utterly banal.

In lieu of a plot, we simply observe Gilderoy, and Toby Jones gives a complicated, worried performance as the quintessential English craftsman, shy and diffident to a fault, and unfussy to the point of being fussy again. We gather over time that he arrived in Italy expecting to work on a very different kind of picture - the horror film is called The Equestrian Vortex, and we might infer that Gilderoy's career experience lies largely in nature films - and there is something strange and compelling in watching the way the emulation of what we can only assume is brutal, even disgusting, screen violence, slowly turns Gilderoy inside out. Never in a particularly demonstrative way, mind you, and (spoiler warning?) those expecting Gilderoy to go on a kill-crazy rampage will leave the film confused and disappointed; but there's a hell of a Shining / Berberian double-feature to be had someday.

The kind of man who enjoys sitting down to read a nice letter from his mum, Gilderoy has recorded and indexed various sounds of home - a clock, a doorbell - and uses them to transport himself to some place of comfort, even while the film restlessly refuses him the respite, pushing through dissolve and audio bridge that make the sound studio and Gilderoy's temporary apartment seem like two halves of the same fevered brain. Meanwhile, The Equestrian Vortex's Italian director and producer argue incessantly, and the parade of young Mediterranean starlets in and out of the recording booth torment Gilderoy like an unending cavalcade of sirens.

Now I must tell you something of the film's end, which would again be a spoiler if Berberian Sound Studio was involved with anything that was recognizeably a plot. And I must reiterate once again that I really have no solid clue what Berberian Sound Studio is about - although I have some theories. There is a moment, you see, where the fabric of reality itself seems to turn itself inside-out like an old shirt; it is marked by the arrival of the only sequence in the film that is not set in dank, dark Berberian Sound Studio, or Gilderoys dank, dark apartment. After this sequence, and without any diegetic explanation, time has reversed itself somewhat, and Gilderoy - who has had difficulty till now with the Italian language - speaks lines we've heard from him earlier in the picture in English, now in Italian. I must assume therefore that this is the point where Gilderoy has gone mad; but it occurred to me almost immediately thereafter that we have no proof that Gilderoy was ever sane, or that any of the events of the picture were "actually" taking place.

What we know is this: the violence of The Equestrian Vortex is never shown, but is only conveyed, in two disconcerting ways. One, the booth announcer intones descriptions of the actions taking place in the offscreen film, as guidance for the sound recordists and foley artists and vocal performers; it is worth watching Berberian Sound Studio for these descriptions alone, for they are equal parts hysterical and horrifying.

And two, we watch - in excruciating, extensive detail - various pieces of fruit get beaten into rotting pulp, various women scream as though they were being murdered, and row after row of analog tape machines take everything mechanically in. It's a simmering reduction of filmmaking artifice and the primal urge to horrify. And I was called upon to ask again and again, in the name of film: why on earth do we do this to ourselves?