Berbarian Sound Studio at the New York Film Festival

(This entry stems from an excerpt of my travel journal, in which I chronicle my recent trip to NYC.)

I was recently in New York City and attending an opera at the Lincoln Center one night, when I noticed some posters there advertising the New York Film Festival.  I've been to the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC a few times but never NYFF. (so in the words of Barney Stinson... Challenge accepted!)  Upon checking their schedule online, I discovered there was a repeat screening of Berberian Sound Studio, a film that I'd very much wanted to see at TIFF but couldn't due to scheduling conflicts and nabbed tix.  The non-member price for tickets at the NYFF hovers around the $20 mark, comparable to TIFF, but since I rarely pay full price for tickets at the Toronto Film Fest, I did raise an eyebrow at the figure.  Oh well, our dollars are almost on par anyway.

 Though they've been around longer (50 years now), boast some big films, celebrity appearances, and interesting year round programing, the New York Film Festival is much smaller than our beloved Toronto International Film Festival.  Berberian Sound Studio was part of their Midnight Movies program (as was Barry Levinson's The Bay, from TIFF"s Midnight Madness program, which was well-received), and this was the repeat screening I was attending.  The film stars Tobey Jones as Gilderoy, a mild-mannered, soft spoken sound engineer hired over from England to work in an Italian Studio on a horror film.  The movie also doubles as a homage to the 70's Italian Horror genre, and the age of analog sound recording with beautiful artsy close ups of film being fed through a projector, Nagra tape recorders, and reels of winding mag stock.  Cinema tends to focus on the visual image, given our obsessions with HD and CGI, while we are treated to beautiful cinematography however we never see the film which they work on, we learn about it purely through sound.  Those not familiar with the workings of ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) or foley might not understand at first what is happening, for those who've done foley work, the chuckles begin almost immediately.  As the recording booth screams grow shriller, and pressures of finding just the right melon to replicate the sound of a skull smashing starts to blur with Gilderoy's reality, we begin to delve into Lynch-ian dream-sequences of mounting psychological terror.  You'll likely find yourself quaking, despite not seeing a single drop of blood spilled.

It was such a treat to be able to see Berberian Sound Studio on a big screen with theatre surround sound, the layers of diagetic and non-diagetic sounds carefully crafted and combined make you perk up your ears the whole time.  I was very amused when the credits included a long list of "Screamers" including a "Special Guest Screamer".  Berbarian Sound Studio was aptly selected for TIFF's Vanguard Program over Midnight Madness, I think it's the perfect example to cite when describing the Vanguard Program as MM's "cooler, older sister".

After seeing Berbarian Sound Studio and writing this blog, I now have an urge to go watch Suspiria after I post this.