Berberian Sound Studio

Anyone else anticipating this? Peter Strickland horror about a guy who goes to make sound effects in a giallo studio... with terrifying results, one must assume.

Couple of links to save googling:

Imdb Entry
Guardian Review
Warp Films Page

would it be a great surround sound movie? *FINGERS CROSSED*

I bloody hope so. One of the things I loved about Amer was its sound design - very little dialogue, so the sound had to be spot on, and they nailed it. Really hoping that this will be as good an homage to the best of the giallo style.

Peter Strickland horror about a guy who goes to make sound effects in a giallo studio... with hilarious results!

A Fabio Frizzi-esque score would be nice, maybe too much to hope for. Katalin Varga was good though, hoping Strickland can take it onwards from there.

slightly disappointed this isn't about Cathy Berberian & Luciano Berio being loopy in 50s Italy, sounds interesting though

Ha, yeah, I've been on a bit of a Cathy tip since the announcement of this.

A Fabio Frizzi-esque score would be nice, maybe too much to hope for. Katalin Varga was good though, hoping Strickland can take it onwards from there.

― don't slip in mud (Matt #2), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 2:27 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Broadcast OST. Looks like Julian House did the posters, as well...

Bit on Film4 last night about this as part of the FrightFest season. The other stuff they're premiering doesn't look *that* brilliant, but I keep on getting more excited about this.

no one can save me from google

this looks great. Broadcast doing the soundtrack sounds perfect.

Well, this was awesome. The sound-work is pretty much perfect, and so ridiculously intense at times. Pretty sure some of Chiara's (think this was the character name) vocalisations were a nod to Cathy? Also quite a few nods to other films - definitely a Repulsion theme in the first half, and, uh, was I the only one to giggle at "it's all for you, Gilderoy"? My only gripe is that it got maybe a little too Lynchian in the last quarter, but masterfully done all the same...

ilxor Fizzles posted his review on the post-2005 horror thread, I think it's a great write-up.

Really looking forward to seeing this on Wednesday,

Pretty sure some of Chiara's (think this was the character name) vocalisations were a nod to Cathy?

http://cdn.thegloss.com/files/2010/08/ack.jpg

Katalin Varga was really terrible but i'd still like to see this.

TT, surely that's Kathy Acker not Cathy Berberian?

Toby Young is great, for a start, with his mole in wind in the willows features

Saw this today, I enjoyed it until the last part. I think I tried to read too much into it, like I was expecting some clumsy reveal about him having stabbed his mother and retreating into a fantasy world of the sound studio or something like Mulholland Drive. Film-within-a-film and the sound-centric nature did feel very Inland Empire (but better - I found IE v disappointing).

really looking forward to this. anyone know if/when it opens in l.a.?

Excellent piece in Mojo - surprisingly, I thought, but I guess I haven't flipped through a Mojo in many years...

thanks for the repost, emil.y

(and yes, fuck knows how toby young crept into my mind, a most unwelcome slip, recitified now).

the other film this reminded me strongly of, partly because of the main character and partly because of structure of the film (an unspooling into recursive insanity), is Dead of Night.

i don't think i got this

film of the year. and yeah, i reckon it qualifies as horror.

failed comedy

i don't think you got this.

it was going for comedy in the first half though right? help me through his people

or through this

i didn't think it was comedy as such. cleaely not a film without humour tho. I guess it treats the awkward engaging between v different cultures fairly lightly at first ("Cor, strike a light") - everyone's fairly genial (tho the film is clearly v dark underneath, and gilderoy is v isolated, absurd even). But that engagement clearly becomes something more than awkward that goes some way beyond comedy, if it was ever that.

I don't know, as I say, although amusing, it never really felt like a comedy.

You really didn't get it, NN. Sorry.

ok, so the first half really isn't going for scares though. It's basically misunderstandings with wacky Italians. Then it starts getting a little weirder but it never really builds up any sense of dread. I wanted to love this, i really did. I was prepared for something that uses sound in a properly creepy way (which is a rarity these days) but it just didn't work for me. One of my favourite films ever is the original version of The Haunting (which i think may have been nodded to with the knocking on the door scene) but it didn't even come close to that with its use of sound to evoke fear

i saw this yesterday and really liked it, tho' i don't know whether i've processed it yet.

gilderoy = allusion to gilles de rais?

Ooh, possibly. I was wondering what significance that name had, as it doesn't seem the most obvious choice for a hermit-like quaint olde Englishman.

I haven't seen this movie yet, but couldn't it be this Gilderoy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AlQ0vjCF9g

Ah. Yeah, probably. Would be highly surprised if a hauntologist film is failing to reference archaic British folk.

http://digital.nls.uk/dcn3/7440/74408571.3.jpg

ha, i thought that was too obvious and there was another gilderoy i didn't know about
surprise! i'm on top of this mystery :)

poor gilderoy

Somehow felt this was too long (probably 70 mins instead of 90). I agree that it was much more subtle than the character simply going crazy, how the film subtly played on his mind. But again because the mind was being played with no sort of end game, this was always going to flag if not edited appropriately, and it wasn't. Like how the claustrophobia of the set-up (pretty much a studio and corridor) was offset with a few touches of humour that made their mark whenever they appeared.

Reminded me a bit of Boogie Nights, of all things. As in, people making this thrash (or a work viewed as thrash) thought it themselves to be art that revealed a truth to be told, and loudly (in BN the makers want recognition for showing something no one else wants to see). But the bullshit meter is always on; Gilderoy doesn't get paid.

aw, you lousy bum, xyzzzz__, this was AMAZING and you are provably WRONG (in all probability) and we'll have to have it out at the next ILB FAP where i shall in all probability wag my finger and refer to Toby Jones as Toby Young.

lol, I saw Toby young on Newsnight eralier this week and thought of your post.

FAP soon, once I'm allowed out on parole.

Loved it. Got totally lost in the English encounter with the catholic, sacrificial-sacramental transformations + repetition. Want to see it again, get my head round it some more.

A1 review Fizzles.

The credit sequence was amazing

Is a soundtrack coming out? I can't seem to find anything about it, but you'd think.

OST and DVD out in December I read somewhere.

would have been great if this ended with about ten minutes of the rural england film, when they burned thru to that.

so i suppose this film is about the small incremental degredations that turn a quiet humane man to doing cruel & ugly things for a job. not sure if it's a masterstroke or a cheat to hint (it seemed to me) at darkness rather than establishing his humanity clearly.

NPR is streaming the Broadcast soundtrack. Looks like it is released officially in a week's time.

And here's a selection of promo posters that didn't get to the manufacturing stage; many awesome designs. No word on a release date apart in the States apart from "early 2013" which is maddening, I want to see this film immediately.

there are dvdrips of it out there now if you can't wait

Yeah, might take the plunge with this one, as I've never done torrenting before. But I'll watch it in theatres for sure when it reaches our shores.

felt this was bit of a let-down, ultimately. like, i didn't really buy the basic set-up - why would italian genre filmmakers need to hire a englishman who had never worked on a horror film before? isn't their whole post-production process rather lavish for an exploitation picture? - so the film could, for me, only work as an exercise in atmosphere, design (sound or otherwise), hints and whispers - and on those terms it simply wasn't gripping enough, or surprising enough, or even strange enough (tho' the moment when gilderoy began speaking in dubbed italian was a great coup). obviously not meritless, but for me rather it was all rather 'easy' - a collection of signifiers designed to please and flatter the genre-savvy, without doing any of the very precise character and narrative work that would make it more satisfying as a story.

saw this the other day and wasn't totally convinced. were the pressures applied to gilderoy really enough to send him over the edge? i dunno, i could have used a bit more explicit trauma there, but i'm mean like that. i did like the two voice artists though, and the bored secretary. also funny to see the bohman brothers popping up in the box hill documentary as a couple of walkers

The soundtrack is amazing.

amazingly bad review in the wire

abt how banal "some hauntology" is, like okay we're using that just as a genre descriptor now are we? yes of course it was by mark fisher

sounds like a really good imitation of italian horror soundtracks to me

Hauntology has been used as a genre descriptor for years. Surprised that MF would give this a bad review, though.

Finally, looks like this will be making the rounds in the US, or at least in my neck of the woods (SF Bay Area) come mid-February. I'm really trying not to spoil too much about this film for myself, as the keywords I know thus far being cheeky homage, Broadcast, sound design, and giallo are my equivalent to sugar-frosted crack, so I'm kinda relieved at the hype deflaters keeping me level headed, so I may traipse into the theatre with semi-low expectations and possibly emerge a happy man.

i don't think i got this

― Number None

felt this was bit of a let-down ... a collection of signifiers designed to please and flatter the genre-savvy, without doing any of the very precise character and narrative work that would make it more satisfying as a story.

― Ward Fowler

i am not entirely convinced it's not me though, wonder if a second watching or someone explaining what was happening in the last third would help my appreciation of the film

loved the photography and set design but it eventually got quite repetitive - how many times do we need to see meters and dials?

I'm with you. All feel, little substance.

and i am a big fan of everything mentioned on thread: broadcast, giallo, lynch, boogie nights, etc

Hauntology has been used as a genre descriptor for years. Surprised that MF would give this a bad review, though.

― emil.y, Tuesday, 15 January 2013 11:32 (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? i mean i've seen the term bandied about for, right, the better part of a decade, it feels like, but this is the first time i'd seen it used in a sentence where syntactically you could have slotted in 'post-punk' or something

also i really want to see this movie. i don't know if i want to hear the record, or at least not until i've seen this movie.

Would've thought a 30 min blast of a sdtrack be better than this.

Like Dancer in the Dark, great soundscapes blah in an otherwise bad film.

This was amazing! Although I found the end a bit sudden/unfulfilling on first viewing. I can't wait to see it again.

would have been great if this ended with about ten minutes of the rural england film, when they burned thru to that.

Yes, my only prob with this is that it peaked about 30 mins too early and then just kind of continued doing what it had always done. Toby was excellently cast, I thought. It just didn't quite resolve itself in a satisfactory way.

I watched it over the weekend and really enjoyed it, but felt a bit unfulfilled too. Like some people upthread I feel that I maybe on some level just didn't ~get it~, which I'm always happy to attribute to my own stupidity rather than any fault in the film.

Anyone want to advance their theory as to what happened?

why do i write "advance" when i simply mean "share"

i'm really going to have to watch it again soon to come up with a theory. were there parallels between the horror film and the actual film?

you mean plotwise? not that i can remember

his deep immersion in an intense and alien aesthetic experience - with its comparatively violent cultural logic - dislocated him from his own sense of place and identity - and he became hauntology.

^^ SPOILERS

yeah, plotwise.

it took me a while to realise he actually resided in the studio. when toby walks out of his room and starts walking on the twigs, i thought he'd either left the house and was walking outside or he was dreaming, which i guess is the intention maybe?

I'm pretty sure that scene was meant to resemble a giallo scene, like the genre/aesthetic he was working on daily and his life were beginning to blend into each other

it took me a while to realise he actually resided in the studio

yeah, that was a big oh duh! moment for me too. i like the idea of the studio itself being some sort of actively malevolent entity, somewhere between a haunted house and HAL, but i'd probably have to go at the movie like an axe to a melon to make it fit that theory

you might not have to stretch that theory that far (although not as a literal reading of course). note that at every recording session the guy pulling the switch - whose face you never see - was always wearing black leather gloves (and the pull resembling a giallo knife slash). I guess the studio could be read as a site of a psychological violence (going on strictly in Toby's head)

btw, and this may reveal some of my hilarious dumbness wrt not getting it, but was i right in assuming that the 'standard setting' (i.e. cinema presentation) is that the italian was unsubtitled?

In a way I'm kind of glad there was no big reveal or a big scare. The whole plot was rather understated, and really the only actual "horror" ultimately comes from Jones's feelings of alienation and the bullying nature of his employers. I think everyone's been there - feeling helpless in a new job or other environment can feel a little like going temporarily mad, and this reflected it.

I watched it with subtitles

The splitting of the screen/splitting of the protaganist's mind + personality seemed to be riffing on PERSONA to some extent

There were some really great shots in this film. I appreciated watching it on my mate's massive HD screen.

There were subtitles when I saw it at the cinema.

i fell asleep

so watching this without realising subtitles were an option was interesting

oops, ha, i feel slightly dumb for also assuming no subtitles. but it seemed to work!

yeah, for the first hour it doesn't seem odd at all. and the first time toby's dubbed into italian it's something really straightforward - "chi e? chi e? .... polizei!" - that you've just heard him say, so you get accustomed to the idea, and so then it just seems like a deliberate decision. especially since there's only about two minutes of continuous speech in the following 20 minutes.

this was great and the metafilm endgame was excellent. The persona nod was greatly appreciated.
I don't know if anyone's talked about it but where you could see the "haunted studio" corrupting the soundguy's mind and driving him mad, there's also a fun philosophical question at play that might obviate that interp: is sound inherently moral? Can sounds, divested of context, be neutral? Can they be evil?
Soundtrack is wonderful btw.

this went to midnights only p fast here

Been watching this again - definitely one of my favourite films of recent years (maybe not just of recent years).

with regard to forks' point - i think it is in the nature of sound in this film that it is projected on to space or objects, so as well as that memorable image of Gilderoy amidst the self-created cats-cradle of magnetic tape, or the oscilloscope, on-screen violence is seen via smashed vegetables, liquidised tomato juice etc. There's a bit where one of the Italian actresses looks at a smashed marrow on the floor and says 'I had hoped for a more dignified end than this', and Francesco says 'What are you complaining about? You can take it home and cook it.' For one, the vegetable has projected into it that which the sound represents on the film (the idea the sound is trying to convey - that of a splattered body or skull), for the other the object is separable from that notion. Is sound evil or neutral? It depends what you do with its source and its projection - to a certain extent, appropriately enough, a matter of faith, like transubstantiation.

Gilderoy is continually trying to reconfigure the spaces of the sound (from the relatively innocuous comment about trying to give an actress's scream more space by changing the mic, to the technical sound sheet, to the deranged magnetic tape), sources, projection, objects etc completely lose their original points of reference - any notion of 'truth' (the original source of a sound, in itself a vexed notion) is lost.

That said, of course, there are still plenty of suggestions that Gilderoy is existing in a certain mental state, of which the studio is only a projected fantasy. (The languages question is strange, sometimes Italians communicate with each other in English, sometimes in Italian - another example of fluctuating comprehension on the part of Gilderoy, but perhaps also fitting into notions of dubbing and the international casts of giallo film - yet another example of how the source of sound and its intended projection is played with).

the transubstantiation of sound... i like it.

i think this is probably 'my favourite film of recent years' tbh, even having watched it with the subtitles off

mb if i watch it with them on i will feel otherwise

That said, of course, there are still plenty of suggestions that Gilderoy is existing in a certain mental state, of which the studio is only a projected fantasy.

i came away from BSS somewhat confused about what, if anything, we were to take as "really real". the line between gilderoy's living space and the recording studio is very fuzzy, and we're given reason to connect both to the small shack that figures in his memories and the letters he periodically receives from his mother. meanwhile, the mutilated birds (ahem) she mentions having found on the ground clearly echo the women butchered in the film gilderoy watches and works on.

one way to read all this might be to suppose that gilderoy never leaves his garden shed. in it, he murders women, his fractured psyche constructing a safe "reality" in which the things he sees are merely a grisly exploitation film made by someone else. the decision-making parts of his mind become the film's overbearing producer & director. the silent soundmen are his hands, doing the dirty work. the sight and smell of the corpses around him are transformed into a tub of rotting refuse that no one ever takes out (note the weird intensity with which the camera stares into that pulpy abyss). and the soundbooth girls, of course, are his victims, trapped and screaming. the innocent, harmless gilderoy we see onscreen is only responsible for the resulting sounds, and even then only indirectly, in their recording and the treatment that attempts to turn them into something less horrible.

this interpretation would provide a somewhat satisfying (if predictable) "answer" to the film's puzzles, but is hard to definitively support. it's where i suspected things would go for the first hour or so, but rather than resolve itself, the film eventually dissolves into almost pure abstraction. suppose i need to watch it again.

Yeah, that's a fun reading too! It's a good sign that this is watchable through multiple lenses and still viable.

my recent short is playing in front of this when it opens in toronto next week.

http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiffbelllightbox/2013/2330002029

i didnt dig this. i was expecting chills and creepiness and it fell well short of the mark.

I was with this for a while, but then it started to seem more and more like a labored attempt at Polanski or Lynch. Liked hearing "The Lark Ascending" (as incongruous as it was), and the receptionist, wow. Didn't get the ending at all, which I'll put down to inattentiveness rather than stupidity. In fairness, I haven't seen a single Bava or Argento film, though I still felt like I understood the atmospherics. But I'm sure someone well versed in the genre would get more out of this than me.

(xxpost) Me when they started up a short beforehand: "Jesus, I don't want to see a short." Quite liked it, though--something to think about--and then when the credits came up, it was "Hey!"

:D

thanks dude!

is your short available to view anywhere else s1ocks?

right now I only have a trailer online for pubic viewing, it's at https://vimeo.com/49685547

I've been mulling over what I'd choose as my Decelerator Moment today...I think it happened in 1978. I was out with some high school friends doing stuff like in the Smashing Pumpkins video, we were all newly hooked on The White Album, and that's as much as I can reconstruct. It was all downhill after that.

I like that moment

u made a short now make a long

i know!!

(its hard)

some guy from ILX started some site where you can raise money for artistic projects.

o yes i know

excellent blogpost on BSS here.

This was just absolutely terrible. Sorry guys.

Really! You got nothing, huh?

Super tedious, which segued into super nonsensical and aimless. Esp painful since I've been waiting to see it since I first heard about it.

huh. well obviously i had a totally different response; it's one of my faves of the year and the soundtrack may be one of my fave albums of the year. did you see it in a theater?

No, but it wouldn't have made me any less bored. At least at home I was able to keep the lights on so I didn't nod off.even then it was a struggle.

Strike a light!

i really liked katalin varga by this guy a lot, but this film was just terrible. really ropey stuff. and the ending was truly embarassing. worst horror ending ever on par with house of the devil. i dont really care for the readings of what happened, it was rendered really poorly. the whole film before that was teetering on this edge of being some kind of a meta horror then the ending came along and the director suddenly decided that he wanted to make a real horror, but it was so hammily executed (not to mention cliche), that it ruined the whole thing. instead of going for a grand climax, id have preferred if he just kept it at the tone it was already at. this was not a film that needed a big blow out, never mind one that arrived with such little warning - it might as well have been a different film. still stunned it got some 5/5 reviews.

climax? big blow out? I thought the ending was totally ambiguous and subdued and not at all horror.

it was like this sudden burst into hallucinatory, nightmarish vision that the film was building up to the whole time - a constant simmer that was more effective at that level than boiling over. i compare the wtf-ness of the ending with kill list, another recent british film that didnt know what to do for its final act.

i love the ending of kill list, think it knew exactly what it was doing

I thought the end of Kill List was sort of cool/funny without maintaining the sense of dread from earlier in the film. BBS much more of a mood piece, I thought.

i didn't really like the way it went totally bonkers and lynchian but then kidn of went back to the original tone except with Toby dubbed in Italian and then just ended abruptly.

it (or ben wheatley) *might* have known what it was doing, but it just seemed so jarring! like suddenly i was in some weird sort of inspector morse episode about cults. im not saying i dont like films that start one way then go another, but both KL and BBS' endings seemed to belong to different films. tbh i saw BBS ages ago when it first came out so i cant remember it perfectly but yeah, the way it went bonkers then ended up dubbed in italian seemed a bit silly for what was a mood piece. i almost wished it had ended before all that happened cos it kinda broke the spell.

i don't know man, seemed pretty obv that KL was heading in the direction it was going in as soon as the creepy guy made it a blood pact - or when their friend drew that occult symbol in their house - i like the way that the film's early 'realistic' mode acted as decoy for the film's ultimate destination.

You guys are idiots.

how so emil.y? conflicting opinions, neither of them right?

I agree with ward fowler about 'kill list'. but i thought the cuts between language and tone in 'bss' were integral to the idea of shifts in sound, language and their source (the ontology of sound?) creating the horror pervading the engineer's displacement from home in his new job (the uncanny?)

BBS woulda worked if it was, like, 45 minutes long. It took its few ideas and stretched them paper thin.

BSS*

i like the end of kill list, but i love wicker man and don't look now, and if you put them together, that's basically the end of kill list.

After having the night/morning to think about it, I think where the film falls apart is the it never established even the slightest sense of eeriness or dread - which isn't a problem per se, but it felt like that was their intention.

its like a british sitcom about an english sound man in italy without the jokes

best thing about it was all the foley/analogue equipment/technique fetishising

made me want to watch blow up or the conversation

xpost yeah, it just wasn't scary or creepy or quite atmospheric enough. it seems to go some of the way, but i totally empathise with those who felt it could've gone further, even though i think overall it's a great movie.

yeah, this was no good

lies. still easily my favourite film of the past few years, having watched again the other day. possible a favourite film of all time.

i think presuming this is a horror music is a grave mistake

er, movie

when i recently watched the new bfi dvd of Dead of Night i got a real BSS vibe from the credits:

http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/mivana/mediaplayer.php?id=b5e1d5fdeb5e2abe5f7b90c98afabdac&media=deadofnight1972&type=mp4

Put off seeing this a long while, wouldn't have if I'd known it's not really a horror film; also a rather forthright critique of the genre's misogyny. Never really liked Toby Jones before, but this frustrated mama's boy role fits him like a glove.

The first guy in the studio (sound editor?) he's working with is a riot, then the director is even funnier.

(I think giallos are the worst shit in the world in case you've forgotten)

Yeah there's definitely some genre critique in here. It's meant as affectionate, but clearly it works either way.

also had forgotten Broadcast did the music

man I LOVED this

I really dug this. Those wacky eye-talians, amirite?

I'm not a huge giallo fan but I've seen and enjoyed enough of them to lol at lines about aroused goblins

I enjoyed the movie immensely up until the big transition 15 minutes before the end. I'm quite skeptical about how this movie is alternately classified as a horror movie or a thriller. Though broad, both of those labels presuppose certain elements that are completely missing from this experimental film. Still, it was a fairly good movie and I am so happy to see Toby Jones in a starring role. Though he has starred before, this is the kind of "actor's actor" that is all too often relegated to outer reaches of the supporting cast.

just went to see the duke of burgundy. v enjoyable. long-game fetishism and lepidoptera. a small figure of eight of sexual domination.

sound again central. the list of recordings listed at the end as if not more important than the visual scenery. pleasing joke in the credits - the informal English names of the moths and butterflies played by their Latin classification.

WHY NOT START A THREAD FOR IT?

v nearly did - or a P Strickland thread - and still might, but the film itself feels a little lightweight. not all in a bad way - wish there were more films that were intriguing bagatelles - but I'm still thinking.

actually that's not true, I'm sitting in the cinema bar drinking, but that's what passes for thinking round my way recently.

A Strickland thread would be better.

Title keeps making me think of the Mr. Show Burgundy Loaf skit

no men in this film btw. relying on Morbs or someone equally well informed to mention other general release films where this is the case.

That's a really good question, and a unique aspect I'm not sure I've encountered reading about this film yet.

the film is superbly punctuated by lectures on lepidoptera, with slow scans of the all women audience - they're all fantastically dressed and individually beautiful - in the way that is sometimes demeaningly termed "striking". the only exception being a slightly toppling badly wigged mannequin.

this film is as much about dress and dressing up as it is about anything else. the visual and aural aspects of the fabric are v sensually indulged in.

very high among 2015's anticipatings

will port all this over to a new thread when I get 'ome.

Saw the trailer when I went to see Goodbye to Language (another film of tiny bits of very beautifully done sound) (as almost all Godard) and I quite like to see this as well.

Thanks for reminding me that I missed my chance to see "Goodbye to Language" in Chicago, apparently. How does Herzog get a 3D documentary about a cave into theatres, and Wenders gets a 3D doc about a dance into theaters, but Godard's lauded latest barely sneaks in for a couple of weeks? And alas because this is meant for 3D, I have a sad feeling that means I will never get to see it.

I was quite taken with Duke of Burgundy.

The psych/soft folk soundtrack by Cat's Eye sounded good as well.

i missed this at ifc, sadface
josh, tbf, both herzog and wenders' films are narrative and about subjects people can easily grasp and are in focus

Hope I manage to see this next week.

I seen it. Very lovely and cosy, I wish I lived there. It is a lot like Morgiana minus the crime and identical twin stuff. At the beginning I thought the plot was going to be totally unimportant but it gradually becomes more interesting.
I think it's too long but I liked it a lot.