A Horror Movie About Making A Horror Movie. Even Working On The Sound Effects Can Be Terrifying...
Berberian Sound Studio (2012)
Mark Kermode listed this as his joint-favourite movie of 2012 along with "A Royal Affair" (which was my personal favourite of the year at the end of 2012). As is often the way when choosing reviewers, sometimes the most interesting thing about following Mark Kermode's reviews is how much I often disagree with him. He always gives a fresh perspective on things. Also, he used to work for Fangoria and has a strong interest in horror films.
Mark Kermode's favourites of the year have often at least been films that I've liked. His favourites over the past nine years were:
2004 - Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
2005 - A History Of Violence
2006 - Pan's Labyrinth
2007 - The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
2008 - Of Time And The City
2009 - Let The Right One In
2010 - Inception
2011 - We Need To Talk About Kevin
Asides from 2007 where I thought his top choice was horrendous ("Assassination of Jesse James" was glacially paced) and 2008 where I've not been inclined to watch the documentary he picked ("Of Time And The City" is a black and white film about changes in Liverpool *yawn*), I've got to admit that all the other choices were great.
So is "Berberian Sound Studio" another great choice or a bit of a dud? Well it's difficult to say. Mark Kermode's co-host Simon Mayo was particularly enthusiastic about "Berberian Sound Studio", not only because of the excellent central performance from the ever-awesome Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Mist, that one episode of Doctor Who...), but also because it is all about sound effects which, as a radio DJ he finds of particulr interest.
The premise is that a sound recording technician is called over to Italy to work on a seemingly somewhat cheesy Giallo movie. We never see any footage from the movie he is working on, but we hear the screams, creepy music and sound effects that are meant to accompany those unseen visuals.
A whole range of sound effects methods are used, such as smashing up watermelons to suggest someone being beaten or the snapping radishes to suggest breaking bones. By focussing on the process of making the sound effects and Toby Jones' deeply uncomfortable grimaces as he watches the screen, allows the audience to come up with their own imagined ideas of how horrible the content of the film must be.
For Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode this movie must have been the perfect blending of both their interests. The film acting as a clear homage to Italian horror films of the past clearly appealed strongly to Mark Kermode, while the ever more inventive sound effects appealed strongly to radio Five Live DJ Simon Mayo.
However, in the end I felt that Berberian Sound Studio was a film that didn't know quite how to end. In a way, this is intentional. There's a sense in which Toby Jones is trapped working on this film and there's a certain cyclical feel to the events on screen. Though the means by which the movie tries to tie things together towards the end didn't entirely work for me, I could see how the film was turning itself into (a very high production value version of) the same kind of Giallo movie that Toby Jones' character is meant to be working on.
There's a sense in which Toby Jones' character, who just loves to work on sound effects, is having something of himself destroyed by his work on this Giallo film. At one point he tries to impress some of his fellow film crew and cast members with a little trick to use a light bulb to make a UFO sound. It's a beautiful sound effect in stark contrast to the hellish sound effects he's expected to provide for the Giallo film itself. And considering the content of the film-within-a-film "hellish" is just the right term to use.
This was a simple and effective film that has some absolutely wonderful work. But in the end it could have done with, if not a stronger story, a clearer sense of how it would establish itself as not needing one. In the light of my Lucio Fulci reviews not so long ago, I found a lot which really appealed here. Still, if you are going to make a movie that makes all the same mistakes as a Giallo film then that should probably also include imitating the typical low production values. However, if you've decided that you are not going to make ALL the same mistakes, then providing a more solid ending than most Italian horror movies might be another good choice.
Berberian Sound Studio is a really impressive film and will give you a great time if you approach it in the right way. Think of it like you would a Lucio Fulci (low budget Italian horror) movie. It's not going to be fantastically complex, but it will certainly leave an impression.
B-