Sound Of Noise (2010) Film Review

Directed by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson Sound Of Noise is labeled as a black humor and oddball action film, which it is. More than anything, though, it is a music film – one which celebrates and pays homage to experimental music, as well as avant-garde classical composers. From the hand-drawn opening credits of Sound Of Noise, I knew there would be something punk rock about this film, and there certainly is. A pair of misfits -- a music school dropout and a stoic songwriter -- enlist four percussionists to join them for a four-movement composition entitled Music For One City And Six Drummers. Executed in true anarchist fashion, the movements take on the form of musical flash mobs, performed in stuffy locations using unlikely on-site equipment. In their first movement, "Doctor, Doctor, Gimme Gas (In My Ass)," the six-person band research and field record every sound in a hospital to find their ideal instruments. They then perform their gig in a surgery room, where they use everything from heart rate monitors to vacuum pipes and oxygen tanks as percussive tools. Every subsequent movement scales up in level of illegality and general outlandishness, concluding in a fourth movement so extreme that even director Johannes Nilsson admitted in a San Francisco International Film Festival Q&A that it may not actually be feasible.