BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO written and directed by Peter Strickland, with Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Fatma Mohamed and Eugenia Caruso. A filmswelike release. 92 minutes. Opens Friday (August 2). For venues and times, see listings.
Peter Strickland will always have room for giallo.
Sitting down for an interview in his distributor’s office during the Toronto Film Festival, the writer/director of Berberian Sound Studio is quick to profess his love for the subgenre of Italian horror pioneered in the hyper-violent thrillers of Mario Bava and Dario Argento.
Strickland’s movie looks at giallo from the inside out, focusing on a British sound engineer (Toby Jones) coming unhinged after arriving in Italy to work on a project called The Equestrian Vortex sometime in the 1970s.
“Murder mysteries and actual horror don’t do a great deal for me,” Strickland says. “But what I loved about the giallos was just the atmosphere. I didn’t go to those films for the plot or the sadism. I went for the atmosphere, just to have my mind altered. There was a transformative quality to those films which you don’t really get so much now. And the soundtracks were just phenomenal.”
Strickland explores those soundtracks in detail in Berberian Sound Studio, focusing not on the grotesque images of The Equestrian Vortex – which we never see, though Jones’s Gilderoy does – but on the labour required to create sound through elaborate foley effects.
“I guess that also fed into the horror of it,” he says. “You have this extreme, unspeakable horror, but at the same time you’re dealing with this extreme, ridiculous pantomime of smashing vegetables. Is it funny? Is it horrifying? There’s this constant dichotomy in the film, which I really love.”
Strickland says the fictional filmmaker’s leering encouragements for squishier, more disturbing sound effects – which drive Gilderoy closer and closer to his breaking point – are his movie’s real message.
“My issue [is] more about the general culture, not only with filmmaking but also with the media, of how you portray violence,” he says. “The hypocrisy, the dishonesty, when it comes to trying to comment on how terrible something is – but sensationalizing it at the same time. I think even if you’re high-minded as a director, making a serious film, how can you control how your audience interprets your images? No matter how seriously you portray violence, you are sensationalizing it.”
Strickland commends Italian filmmakers like Argento and Lucio Fulci – and Americans like Tobe Hooper – for their honesty in tackling the subject.
“‘This is guts and gore – deal with it. Just go out and have fun with it.’ If you’ve got that attitude, I have no problem with that. I mean, I love [Hooper’s] Texas Chain Saw Massacre – it is what it is, it doesn’t purport to be anything else – but the other grindhouse films always have these very stern voiceovers, you know, ‘Jaded youth! This is what they get up to! Perversity! Have a good look!'”
Berberian Sound Studio is Strickland’s way of pushing back against what he sees as the escalation of the horror genre.
“You have these lists, the 10 sickest films, and they just go further and further,” he says. “What is the point? I think Berberian’s part in that is just to strip everything back. Can an audience still be unsettled with just the sound?”
Interview Clips
Peter Strickland on sound mixing as a storytelling tool:
Strickland on the appeal of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, a key reference point for his movie:
Strickland on the similarities between madness and filmmaking:
normw@nowtoronto.com | @wilnervision
