Berberian Sound Studio

Synopsis: It is the 1970s and a timid English sound engineer (Toby Jones) who lives with his Mum and makes nature documentaries, arrives in Italy to work for a pulp horror film studio. Well out of his comfort zone and cut off from everything he knows, his grip on reality gradually fragments.

Films based on pre-determined theses are generally ham-fisted, as anyone who has watched 1980s feminist cinema will know. Berberian Sound Studio explicitly makes a case for the destructive effects of film, specifically horror film, on the psyche. The thesis is well sustained but the good news is that it is done brilliantly.

Writer-director Peter Strickland is a former experimental music-maker (the title of the film refers to Cathy Berberian, an American soprano married to Italian electronic music pioneer Lucio Berio) who has directed one film previously, Katalin Varga, which I have not seen but which I am sure a lot of people will be hunting down after seeing this. He has used his knowledge of Italian giallo films, low budget slasher horror outings by directors such as Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci who often made very telling use of sound design and music in their unsettling productions not to recreate the style (all we ever see of the film being made are its opening titles) but to create an explicit atmosphere. The horror that we witness is of a psychological nature as the mild-mannered sound engineer Gilderoy finds the derangement that is at the core of the film that he is working on insinuating itself into his consciousness to the point that he is no longer able to distinguish fact from fiction.

Toby Jones gives a wonderfully understated performance as the deferential little man but this is just one of the many aspects, from Strickland’s finely judged script to Jennifer Kerneke sombre production design, from Nic Knowland’s marvellous cinematography to Chris Dickens’ elliptical editing and, of course, the highly effective use of sound and music by experimental music band Broadcast, all these elements working together seamlessly to create a darkly hermetic world that gradually acquires the form of a waking nightmare.

No-one who appreciates film-making craftsmanship (and vintage sound recording equipment and techniques) should miss Berberian Sound Studio.

 

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