Why I like Berberian Sound Studio

Why I like Berberian Sound Studio

1) I saw Berberian Sound Studio in the worst possible circumstances: I watched the entire thing on my iPhone over several sessions walking on an elliptical machine at my local gym. Cardio is both necessary and incredibly boring, and I had gotten sick of listening to podcasts while I worked out. I saw some less-than-stellar movies, but Berberian Sound Studio captured my imagination. I got into Only Lovers Left Alive at around the same time, and I've been a fierce advocate for both films since. It seems like there have been a lot of smart, classy horror films over the last few years and I was really excited to share them with people. 

2) Like Only Lovers, Berberian is total sound porn. Instead of music, Berberian focuses on the sound engineering and foley work used to make an effective horror film. I've never seen a film that made such brilliant use of sound effect work.

3) Confession time: I've never much cared for the "golden age" of 1970s Italian horror cinema. I think most of the appeal comes from a strange mix of nostalgia for an era that was before my time, a misreading of incompetent film making that gets confused for camp, and a gorehound's delight in a few key scenes of truly nasty gore effects. I'm watching Lucio Fulci's Zombie 2 on the second monitor as I type this and no one ever remembers anything substantial about the film. They just remember the eye gouging and the shark fight. I do like The Beyond and the Argento film Phenomena but Italian horror doesn't really work for me. But it does make a fantastic backdrop for Gilderoy's mental breakdown. 

4) I am embarrassed to admit it, but I see far too much of myself in Gilderoy. I'm small and easily bowled over, and I'm often shocked when people act selfishly. His timid personality puts him at a huge disadvantage when he's brought to Italy to work on some perverse giallo film. My own experience in Italy taught me that the people can often be, um, unnecessarily assertive. A sheltered person like Gilderoy would easily be bowled over. Gilderoy's immediate supervisor is rude to him without reason, the receptionist is dismissive, and everyone either blows him off or talks down to him. The only one who treats Gilderoy decently is the film's director, and he's a manipulative narcissist with grandiose ideas about the misogynist trash he's creating.

5) The film takes places in a strange film noir world. The hallways disappear down impossible distances, the rooms never seem to be properly lit, and the recording rooms are all like tiny coffins. The entire movie world feels like an echo chamber, which is perfect for the best aspect of Berberian Sound Studios: the masterful use of sound.

6) I've never seen a movie so lush with aural detail. You never actually see the movie Gilderoy is helping to make, but the horrific special effects conjure up a pretty clear image of how nasty the movie must be. Sound is used to brilliant effect in the film. Every cut lettuce, every dropped melon feels like a violation of the human body. I've heard a thousand screams captured on horror cinema, but I've never heard anything as gut-wrenching as the screams of frustration captured in the recording booth.

7) The movie follows Gilderoy's descent into madness, as his life begins to thread into the movie. Perhaps the occult nature of the film casts a spell on him, perhaps he starts going insane, perhaps he was insane to begin with, a man who appeared out of the film itself. The ambiguity made the ending frustrating for a lot of people, but I found it intriguing. I can't wait to go back and revisit the film. Hopefully next time on a better screen. 

Conclusion: I've never seen a horror film that so effectively used the mechanics of cinema to deliver tension. Watching Gilderoy degenerate to the chaos around him becomes almost operatic. The line between film and "reality" gets razor-thin over the course of the movie. It's a rare treat, and one of my favorite recent horror films.                 

The Orphan

I guessed the twist ending to The Orphan about half-way through the movie.



I never guess the twist ending to movies. I didn't catch that Bruce Willis was dead in Sixth Sense, I didn't catch that Verbal Kint was Keyser Soze, and I probably wouldn't have guessed the chick in The Crying Game was really a dude. Maybe I'm dumb, maybe these movies involve too much narrative cheating to cover the twist (this is certainly true of The Usual Suspects) or maybe I get too lost in the moment to overthink what happens next. But I got the twist in The Orphan and I was deliriously pleased with myself.

Not that this detracted from the experience. To the contrary, I really liked The Orphan.

I dunno if it's the kind of movie that will survive multiple showings, and I don't know if I would have had as much fun if I didn't see it on the big screen, but I'm a sucker for killer kid flicks and this one was even more deliciously twisted than most. Oh, sure, the squares won't like it, but there is some wonderfully warped stuff in this.

Most of the success in this flick comes from Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther, the precocious little murderess. Most killer kids in movies just kinda stand around and glare ominously, which Esther does in spades, but she also brings a lot of pathos to the role. We don't get the sense that Esther is purely manipulative and evil, but is instead someone that's been so damaged by whatever happened to her in life that she can't come back around the other side. Even when we learn Esther's big secret Furhman keeps the revelation believable, especially given that the character goes into some disgusting dark places. According to IMDB, Fuhrman is gonna be in the Children of the Corn remake, and I hope she brings the same skill to her flyover-land horror tale.

Now, I gotta say that without Esther and all her weirdness, The Orphan would be just another middle class family anxiety thriller. Most of the action takes place in a house I couldn't afford in a million years and the characters have got that successful white-y angst going on. It's a family of Guitar Hero and therapy and miscarriages and hidden diaries and wine bottles, which is all pretty typical of the genre, but Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard do a helluva job making the domestic drama interesting. I liked the two characters, I bought into their frustration, and I felt for them when their family started falling apart. Granted, Peter Sarsgaard's John Colemna was a little too quick to dismiss his wife's concern, but they still remained a sexy, believable, damaged-but-surviving couple.



There were a lot of cool touches in the movie. Esther's insane artwork, revealed only through the black light of her fish tank, was absolutely awesome. I want someone to do a ghastly black-light mural in my place.

There was also a very sexy scene of the couple making love in the kitchen. Granted, they were pretty foolish to have sex in a big open room with their kids nearby, but I liked the spontaneity and the passionate awkwardness of the scene. It's really nice to see a sex scene in a movie that doesn't look as smooth and rehearsed as partner figure skating, where people bump into each other and struggle out of their clothes and do all the other clumsy stuff real couples do.

The movie opens with a really gruesome scene of the mother's nightmarish ordeal during her miscarriage. I've heard a lot of people express discomfort at the image of a pregnant mother taken to such a nasty extreme, but I thought the scene was well filmed and skin-crawlingly creepy, even though it doesn't fit with the rest of the film.



Digging into the subtext of the film, there's something that should be noted about Esther: She's from Eastern Europe. The horror genre always had a long and profitable relationship with the Slavic peoples, going all the way back to a certain TransCarpathian Count. Lately, Eastern Europe seems to be the go-to place when you need amoral and vicious characters. Hostel, Severance, and The Orphan all feature characters twisted by decadence or amorality into doing the most awful things to their fellow man, all fueled by the fall of Communism. This is, of course, horribly prejudiced and made me terribly nervous when I backpacked through Bulgaria and Romania. Any Eastern Europeans out there wanna weigh in on this?

Okay, while we're on this, I want to declare a moratorium on appearing-in-a-mirror-behind-a-character jump scare. You know the one. A character opens a medicine chest/ closet/whatever, with an empty space clearly framed behind them in the shot, they close the door, and someone is now standing in that spot while the music spikes. About half the time they aren't even a threat, which invariably prompts the surprised character to say "You scared me." That shit officially needs to be removed from the horror bag of tricks for a period of no less than three-to-five years.

Anyway, go check it out while it's still in theaters. Bring drunk friends and your love of outrageous wickedness. It's a lot less fun in a small screen, though my friends and I are totally gonna make a drinking game of this. Take a shot every time Esther says something creepy.