Berberian Sound Studio

In what little I could verbalize about The Master, I spent most of it gushing about the amazing cinematography. Similarly, what is really mindblowing about Berberian Sound Studio is the sound, and how the film shows off the craft of making such a rich soundscape. The story follows Gilderoy, a sound engineer hired for an Italian film called "The Equestrian Vortex". Unfortunately, when he arrives, he finds out that the film has nothing to do with horses; The Equestrian Vortex is a graphically violent horror film which the director is convinced is nothing short of brilliance. Out of his element and working with a hostile producer and a director who considers the brutal violence to be art, he begins to lose himself in the process of bringing these sounds to life.

All we see of the film is the opening credits (taking place of a credit sequence for the actual film), but the real way we get the feel of Equestrian Vortex is by descriptions of certain scenes and the rich, disturbing, and at times nauseating soundscape that Gilderoy creates for them. Berberian Sound Studio truly shows how sound brings a film to life; Gilderoy creates crisp, descriptive sounds from fruits, vegetables, bubbling soup, sizzling oil, and aggressive ambient sound from a plethora of intimidating machines. The latter reminds me of the ambient sound from Eraserhead; it creates a cold, unsettling world both in Equestrian Vortex and the actual film, to the point where it can be nauseating.

Sound is also closely linked with violence; Equestrian Vortex is meant to be an homage to giallo films of the 70s (although in the Q&A I was at, director Peter Strickland noted that it's really closer to gothic horror than the giallo genre), which often had grisly murders, stylish camerawork, and unique soundtracks. Berberian Sound Studio could be seen as a celebration of the genre's soundtrack as well as a critique on the violence, particularly against women. Equestrian Vortex describes a variety of violence against witches and its two female protagonists, and Gilderoy spends a lot of time listening to them shriek over and over again while being belittled by the producer. While we don't see any of the violence that is filmed, we are forced to watch and listen to stabbing of vegetables, smashing of fruits, ripping of stems, and sizzling oil in lieu of murder and torture as the director tells Gilderoy that he is making art, not a horror film. Seeing the fruits and vegetables instead of the actual imagery circumvents any desensitization to onscreen violence, allowing the imagination of the viewer to put the sounds together with the descriptions of the scene.

There isn't a clear plot in Berberian Sound Studio; it is mostly about Gilderoy succumbing to the atmosphere of the sounds he has created and the hostile work environment  This works perfectly for the first two thirds of the film, but the last third slips into something which is honestly hard to describe. Gilderoy 's descent into madness comes to a head, but then there's still around half an hour that's incredibly unclear. It's obviously a 'left up to interpretation' sort of thing, but it's hard to figure out what's real enough to interpret. It's much less "ambiguous" than just plain vague, and while it's interesting to experience it, there's no real fulfillment when the credits come up. The first two acts are strong enough to make it still worth watching, but the end is a glaring flaw.