Noise

Graham McGahan sits in a trailer every night, overnight, waiting to interview anyone happening by with the nerve to spill their guts. There was a recent slaughter of several subway passengers in a bedroom community of Melbourne, Australia, and only one survivor. The survivor is a young artist who was mysteriously spared the assailant's automatic. No one else left to help the police with the puzzle. Her memory is tainted by shock; there are several pieces missing, several holes in her story. 

So Graham, a subway cop demoted to graveyard detail after fainting moments before the killing spree, sits in the caravan, parked very close to the crime scene.

His supervisors, none too fond of him, feel that maybe someone knows something, and will feel compelled to fill in the gaps. A few happen by, including the fiance of one of the victims. He's usually drunk and abusive. The killer himself also stops in, also abusive, mostly verbally. Weird one, he is. We know he's the killer because NOISE writer/director Matthew Saville makes no attempt to shield his face during the numerous reenactments of the bloodbath. So we know we're not watching a whodunnit. This despite the scenes of police procedurals that ring of Law & Order, Aussie style.

Through the familiar device of the Gradually Expanding Flashback (props to R. Ebert), we learn more and more, seeing what really happened on that train. It illuminates, um, very little. In terms of events or thematic significance. So what sort of film are we watching anyway? One novelty is that Graham, in addition to the usual trials of a cop, suffers from tinnitus, ringing in his ears. Damned near constant. NOISE provides the viewer with a high-pitched whine on the soundtrack to suffer with just like the protagonist. It gets louder when he's stressed.

Yep. I'm an audiologist who deals with tinnitus patients and I can tell you that that is accurate. Peer reviewed lit will back that up, too. all subjective, of course. Some patients are suicidal. I suspect Graham has entertained that idea. His audiologist suspects he has a tumor. Could be a cause of tinnitus, sure. However, we only see her look in one ear with her scope and make this presumption. Er....was there a consultant on this picture? Maybe it doesn't matter dramatically but c'mon! This oversight was even more amusing than that on a recent episode of "House", a medical drama for cryin' out loud, where discussion of cochlear implants was grossly inaccurate. Do your homework, guys! 

OK, *ahem*.... I did not select this film based on the tinnitus plot thead, by the way; it just happened that way. After my wife brought it home from the library, I read the back of the DVD case, and I was curious. Maybe she selected it with a motive. NOISE is an offering from "The Film Movement", a series of international films heralded for their insight and originality. One could subscribe to the organization and receive a different film each month. This is the second from this series that I've seen. While both are certainly brimming with potential, NOISE suffers the same shortcomings as 2003's THE FOREST FOR THE TREES-a muted impact.  A jab that lands just short of the gut. Good intentions abound, but the art (and it is that) feels unfinished. 

You have the raw materials, but perhaps the wrong artist is brushing the canvas. To be fair, maybe these films are the sorts of dry runs the artists need to go on to better things. Not every master director came out of the gate with a classic on the first go round. Check the Roger Corman cheapies Francis Ford Coppola made sometime for evidence. So how does the tinnitus fit into NOISE? Relevance? Depends on you, dear viewer. It is easily surmised that the perceptions are part of the "noise" that threatens to unravel this cop. A compounding of all the other stressors in his life. His character is sketchily drawn, but he fares better than most of the rest of the cast. Why are we watching anyway? I asked this several times during NOISE. Intriguing elements (and crisp cinematography) do not a great film make. Everything was muddled. Suspense is not the object, and there is none by the climax. At that point, we reach The End, a scene of alleged significance. It comes off as heavy-handed.

Had the film been more involving, the scene might've had more resonance. Still, a handful of sequences are effective. The young artist is confronted by the man (not the killer) she picks in a lineup. One particularly bad morning, Graham not only deals with debilitating tinnitus, but his hearing goes as well. In his attempts to counteract the tinnitus, he turns on every radio, television, fan, and faucet in his flat. He clangs on his piano and drums, anything to mask the annoyance. Then, he realizes that he cannot hear a single thing his girlfriend is trying to tell him. NOTE-he should've gone to the ER in case he had sudden hearing loss, but I digress.

It's still a well performed and edited ballet of one man's hell. I also was fascinated by Graham's theory on the afterlife. He explains that he had read that your brain dies 10 seconds after the rest of your body. In that 10 seconds, depending on the sort of bloke you were, you either focus on what a bad or good person you were, and that 10 seconds is your eternity, or so it seems. You are destined to live there. That monologue came to mind as I watched the climax. Not to give anything away, but one hopes that those 10 seconds didn't sound like screaming crickets or whistling tea kettles.