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.

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 on the tape; I’m in the board; I’m gone.

I’m a little surprised Peter Strickland isn’t more popular of a director. He certainly exhibits a strong directorial presence in his take on genre filmmaking, including abstract sequences and overwhelming sound design in his films. It should come at no surprise then that a horror film set in a sound studio that pays homage to giallo filmmaking would be right up Strickland’s alley. Berberian Sound Studio can also be taken as a reflexive work- the filmmaking process is shown in great detail in a manner different from a number of films that also include scenes that depict filmmaking.

Setup: 4/5
Execution: 0/5
Vegetables: 5/5

A sound engineer’s wet dream, but a cinefile’s nightmare... well at least for me. All filmed in one location, which is impressive, but it never goes anywhere or reaches a conclusion. You mostly watch Toby Jones dub sound effects to a giallo without ever seeing the film. Again, impressive but falls flat like a zucchini in the final act.

I wanted to save this one til October but I found out that it was up on Mubi so I just decided to watch it. I actually had tickets to see this movie for AFI fest back in 2012 but missed the showing by 15 minutes and they wouldn’t let me in lol

This movie has predictably good sound design given the premise, but its inventive visual style was the most impressive thing to me. It never seemed to grab me the way I wish it would, though, and it’s also got some pacing issues. Ultimately, it’s more conceptually interesting than it is a joy to watch. 

6.75

I can't talk about this. There is too much. There is just sooooo much. I love this movie.

Good concept, but unlike The Duke of Burgundy, it doesn't have the focus to make it all stick.

I feel like I should have liked this more; it’s dense and it experiments with formal elements and its play with genre is more than just a pastiche, it’s subject matter. And yet I wasn’t crazy about it, in many ways because I felt like it wasn’t surprising enough. Outside of some creative use of sound, the text of Berberian Sound Studio is almost textbook How It’s Done. The mental breakdown is familiar, how it’s presented isn’t terribly new, and the implications and stakes are substandard. I’d hesitate to call this an experimental film (it’s not, it’s a narrative feature), but its experimentation is clearly the best part. If the effect of that experimentation did with sound what Pontypool did with dialogue (as I think the filmmakers were going for similar things), this could have been an all-timer.

I'd already seen the stage adaptation of this film before seeing it, and so that definitely had an effect on how I judged the story. I think both versions do a great job of isolating the audience by using an unpredictable structure and editing style as the story progresses and of course the predominantly Italian dialogue (which is intended to be watched without subtitles btw).

Toby Jones does a great job in the role, and the overall concept certainly gets you thinking. Also, some really nice production design on this, it set the scene well and felt fleshed out despite only really being 3 sets.

My only criticism is that I think the play fleshed out the protagonist better and ultimately gave out a better pay off, however that could easily be a product of having a longer runtime to work with.

결국에는 환경이 사람을 지배한다는 생각에서 한참 더 나아가, 마치 영화 <비디오드롬>처럼 소심한 음향 기술자인 주인공을 그가 연출하던 지알로 영화가 어느새 자신의 자극적인 세계 속으로 삼켜버린다는 메타적인 전개와 그 시점 이후의 연출이 흥미롭다. 다만 영화 속 세계관의 그러한 전이가 등장하는 시점이 뒤늦은 편이라 그 흥미가 충분히 돋궈지지 않는 점이 사뭇 아쉽다.