Noise (2007)

The best movie I have seen this year was Batman. My second best movie for 2008 is an indie…Noise. Noise was filmed in Australia. Written and Directed by Matthew Saville and a cast equally unknown to me…I was left thoroughly impressed. I imagine that having noise incorporated as an integrated part of the story line is not a new concept. Using noise (even ambient noise) as antagonist…when the story is about a Serial Killer…is a stretch. In the case of Noise…it is not too far a stretch. Noise tells the story of a serial killer who conducts a horrific attack on a commuter train. A subsequent murder has a small town tethered to their televisions in anticipation of the latest developments. In the meantime, the Police are trying to track their killer. The investigation centers around a lone survivor from the train and a Police Officer who collapses on an elevator following the shootings. The stories are interwoven, yet parallel each other. The Police Officer (Constable McCann) is played by Brendan Cowell. Cowell looks familiar to me, but I don’t think I have seen him prior to this movie…he has one of those looks. The Police Officer is reassigned due to tinnitus discovered following his collapse. A sub-plot develops out of this discovery which adds depth to the movie’s ending. The tinnitus plays a role in developing the noise plots, although the sound element to the movie is not solely reliant on that sub-plot. Movies segue from one scene to another in various ways. They generally transition from one personal interaction to another. I have also seen movies that use sound as a segue…like a clap of thunder changing to a book thumping closed. The sound transitions in Noise are not done in this manner. In fact, the type of sound is irrelevant. The scenes tend to transition around an eclectic cacophony of sounds that sometimes have no rhyme or reason. It is merely a different way to tell the story. A scene may open with the raucous whirring of a weed whip as an extra moves about the background tending to the landscape. The landscaping then gives way to the major actors who proceed into their dialogue.

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