Berberian Sound Studio (2012) - 2/4

The plot description I had read of Berberian Sound Studio that intrigued me was, "A sound engineer's work for an Italian horror studio becomes a terrifying case of life imitating art." This is the main plot description from IMDb. The most glaring gem in the sentence is 'Italian horror studio,' suggesting the Gothic horrors of Mario Bava, the lurid Gialli of Sergio Martino, the supernatural weirdness of Dario Argento, the gore of Lucio Fulci, and the gifted nonsense penned by Dardano Sacchetti. The second, and to me more tempting gem is 'sound engineer,' calling to mind two of the greatest thrillers ever made, The Conversation and Blow Out. I expected a lot.

Maybe that's not fair to Peter Strickland. BSS is the filmmaker's second feature film, made independently and on a limited budget. Of course, these aren't actual standards to which I am holding the film. I expected a skillful homage to Italian horror, maybe a bit of a mind-bender, with sound playing an important role. Something to that effect.

Despite the claims to "life imitating art," however, Berberian Sound Studio really has little to do with Italian horror. Toby Jones plays Gilderoy, a British sound engineer hired to work on an Italian horror film that seems to fit somewhere between The Witchfinder General (a British film) and Mark of the Devil (a German film). He thought it would be an 'equestrian' film. What ensues is the small, awkward dramatic tensions between the bully Italian producer and the meek Brit. Whiffs of intrigue come from the lead voice actress's suggestions of something more malign. Little actually happens, however, until she quits and Gilderoy is literally absorbed by the film.

The film's action, due to budget, style, or both, takes place almost entirely in a single sound-studio room, a bedroom, and an office, with a few black background abstractions. The tensions between Gilderoy and the Italians, his moments with the actress, I found all very intriguing, even seductive. This is really a credit to Strickland's command of style and tone. However, his highly portentous approach to style can be tedious, as it continues to promise explosions that never happen.

The closest to a climax BSS offers comes about in the final twenty minutes and is much closer to David Lynch's Inland Empire than anything Italian. I don't think surrealism or reality-twisting is the unique province of David Lynch. However, when one treads too closely to Lynch's territory, comparisons will follow. What Strickland does in BSS was, frankly, done better and more interestingly in Inland Empire. From Berberian Sound Studio, I was expecting something much different and much less evasive.

Strickland's explanation is that "the film is out of view, and you only see the mechanics behind it." In a sense, this is true. The fictional horror film Il Vortice Equestre is out of view. However, the conflicts in Strickland's film do take place in view: the are the tensions between the British sound engineer and the Italians; between the oversensitive Gilderoy and the grisly horror film he's making. If this experience is supposed to drive him into some psychological or even metaphysical breakdown, it's preposterous. Many British actors and crew worked on Italian horror films. They lived to tell the tale. What Gilderoy goes through is a mildly unpleasant experience. It'll make a good story to tell friends at the pub. We might listen to the story and say, "Wow, hmph, those Italians!" We'd never say, "They should make a movie about that." An interesting experiment, but ultimately a disingenuous one.