Synopsis
In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past.
2012 Directed by Peter Strickland
In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past.
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What is Berberian Sound Studio about? Listen carefully.
If you do, you'll hear the music of Broadcast, the Birmingham-based electronic group who provided the score to Peter Strickland's second film. Broadcast, along with Pram, Stereolab, Position Normal and Boards of Canada, were one of the first British bands to work in what's termed the "hauntological" style.
The term "hauntology" was coined by the French theorist Jacques Derrida, who claimed that a society that considered itself beyond ideology - as the post-Communist West initially did - would be unable to imagine a future, and would instead be ruined by ghosts of the past. To understand what it means in terms of music, remember that the Boards of Canada were named after…
A tall Leprechaun goes to work at an Italian giallo sound studio. A proper greeting. A Gallagher moment. Acting all Enya like. Yummy chocolate! Reimbursement. Language barriers. Fuckin' dubbing. Spiders are icky. Demonic moaning. A cool-as-fuck doggy. Silenzo. A thing-a-ma-jig. Mario's brother. A red-hot poker. Blowing bubbles. Always swallow the seeds. Twigs. Sometimes you just need to scream. A lit candle. Fuckin' curses. Reelz of film. Tickling is fun. The line-up. Ding-dong. Lights, camera, action! Cows like to graze. The letter from Mum. Serpent semen. Unending screams. Eerie, without a money-shot. Unique, with fuckin' fantastic audio stimulation of the mind. However, a film I couldn't quite become fully invested in and therefore I can't fully recommend it.
Another in the great tradition of films about filmmaking, this is the rare entry about something other than a screenwriter, director, or actor: in this case, a meek British sound engineer, hired away to a scruffy, disreputable Italian studio to provide quality sound design for a grotesque-sounding giallo full of garish misogynist tortures. The film's genius is in never showing the film that the engineer (played by Toby Jones) is working on—the camera just focuses on his wincing responses, as he stabs cabbages or sizzles water in a pan to make the proper squelching or burning sounds. His descent into the hell of creative participation in something he doesn't believe in strongly recalls the madness of Barton Fink, but the…
Ever since I saw a review of it in Empire and Sight & Sound and was enticed by adverts for screenings of it at the fabulous Cornerhouse every time I went by on the 50 bus for a couple of weeks, I have been counting down the days until I saw Berberian Sound Studio.
It's odd, really. I've not seen Peter Strickland's previous film, Katalin Varga. I'm not especially knowledgeable about Toby Jones' work. Plus, I'm not someone who has a massive amount of background knowledge about giallo and Italian horror films. So as I started to watch it, I was trying to figure out exactly what about it had pulled me in to wanting to see it as much as…
"silence."
Blow Out + Beyond the Black Rainbow ÷ Mario Bava = Berberian Sound Studio.
a much better film about foley artists than NOBODY WALKS, that's for sure. dug the style, dug toby jones, dug how it crawls up its own asshole. mmmm lovely.
Absolute audiophile heaven. And not even half as stupid as I thought it was going to be. The headphone watch on this was transcendent, often kicking off serious Lustmord energy. If this were a review of just the audioscaping we’d easily be in five star territory. But honestly, as it stands, it’s pretty visually and thematically compelling as well. Especially when the movie is in dialogue with Italian exploitation horror (a genre I love dearly). The mirror it holds up to the genre is formally exciting. It tilts at the dangerous masculinity and base misogyny that seems to be found down in the very DNA of Italian cinema from the 70s, and it does this while never becoming exploitation itself.…
i saw someone say that this plays with common horror tropes the way that scream or behind the mask does, but i found myself extremely bored for the majority of it. even in the most exciting moments, i really wasn't interested enough to recommend it to any of my friends. maybe i just don't get it, but this kinda sucked.
Peter Strickland loves Suspiria (1977) so much that it cannot be gazed upon directly but like the head of Medusa must be apprehended only in reflection so one obsessively makes metaspirias, notspirias, as tribute as sacrifice as offering. Strickland makes movies which are expressly not Suspiria which limn & comment & gloss Suspiria in dream & reverie & contemplation the better to highlight Suspirias positive qualities through the construction of deliberately distorted mirrors the articulation of possible negative spaces closed off to reality by the existence of irl Suspiria which as soon as it was made was haunted by itself casting echoes & reverbs of itself in spacetime in Argentos own catalogue Argento was never able to replicate Suspiria never attempted the task but remained…
Lise and Jonnie's What A Wonderful World 2015
30, 15, maybe 7 and a half IPS, but no slower. Quarter inch; at least half track, but probably full track, save for that narrow band reserved for the almighty pilottone.
The grand Revox turning over the split-flange NAB hub reels hypnotically; the silent Nagra with its always naked head stack; its glowing VU eye dances, visualizing the sound of a macheted melon as a decapitated head drops; the Nagra, appreciatively, gobbles it all up.
Are the reels turning slower, or am I just moving farther and farther away?
I’m in the board; I’m on the tape; I’m gone.
My girlfriend asserted that Berberian Sound Studio was a film about gaslighting. I, however, thought it was an example of bullying. I incessantly declared that the couple times she briefly looked down at her phone were the moments that proved she had no idea what she was talking about. She gave in after a while and said I was 100% correct.
Great film!
"This is not a horror film, this is a Santini film." - Santini,
Someone had to do sound design on a scene where people are doing sound design... I'm so fucking deep!
A sound tech is hired to help the Berberian Sound Studio create the sound effects for a horror film by an elusive director named Santini. The man becomes entranced by the process and slowly devolves into madness... or does he? It's a slow paced, atmospheric thriller and that creates a great theatrical experience.
This is a Giallo inspired film with great cinematography, score and lighting. The sound design is unsurprisingly one of the best parts of Berberian Sound Studio. It's one of the rare times where I thought…