User Reviews

Amadeus Warnebring is the black sheep of the family, completely tone deaf, where as everyone else is musical prodigies. Amadeus went on to be a cop instead and is put in charge of the mysterious investigation where the only clue is a metronome left behind. And soon a group of anonymous percussionists starts to terrorize the city with music.

Sound of Noise is a very odd movie. Forget that the dialog and story are somewhat stiff and wooden at times, it is the music that is everything. And it rocks. Especially the piece with the heavy machinery was spectacular, but the performance at the hospital was catching as well. Anyone who likes rhythm is in for a real treat.

7/10

How about four anarchist drummers performing street music illegally without permits from the proper authorities. The first event takes place in a hospital operating room where an obese man is awaiting surgery and whose body is used as a percussive device.

A bank is next up for these oddball artists. They don't rob it, but instead shred the money, utilizing the sound of the machines for effect.

The third movement, as it were, has the four with giant bulldozers in front of an opera house using the shovel portion thumping up and down on the asphalt of the parking lot as a rhythmic tune.

The final act is an ingenuous undertaking where the musicians are suspended from electrical power transmission lines using metal objects as bows mimicking the sound of a gigantic violin. Art of Noise is a very quirky comedy which I found to be funny and inventive at the same time.

Before going into this film, there were a few factors that led me to believe that this was going to be a dark film. One, was that it was described as a crime film, the R rating and the fact that it is Swedish. I must guiltily admit that as an American, there is a stereotype that Swedish film is dark and/or depressing (considering the work of Bergman, Moodyson, Let the Right One In, The Steig Larssen adaptations etc). Unfortunately, this is due to the aforementioned artists and narratives as being what is presented to the US market. However, I will no longer harbor such a skewed image of said culture.

Sound of Noise is certainly not a dark film by any means. It is a heart-warming, quirky tale of family, forgiveness and the ultimate quest for silence. It's an extended adaptation of a short from nearly a decade before that involved the leading actress of the film, comedian Sanna Persson.

The films centers around two percussionists who recruit a motley crew of other drummers to help them carry out their elaborate performance pieces. Each drummer has a different specialty, as in the orchestral percussionist, the lounge drummer, the electronic drummer and so on. The film takes on a satirical form of a heist genre pic. Just imagine Oceans Eleven but with drummers instead of safecrackers and card counters. Some may feel that the elaborate performances are over the top and too Stomp-like but I think that is the point. In the most subtle sense, it strives to provide tongue-in-cheeck commentary on the urban, avant-garde squatters who are constantly trying to top themselves at every gallery crawl.

For the most part, despite the rating, Sound of Noise is fun for the whole family. Your kids need to read subtitles anyway. It's good for them.

File under: Napoleon Dynamite, Wes Anderson

I have not seen every movie ever made, but I'm fairly confident in my belief that there has never been one in which six anarchist musicians break into a hospital dressed as nurses, wheel a patient into an operating room, sedate him, and then perform a makeshift concert using everything in the room, including the patient's stomach, as a percussion instrument. "Sound of Noise" is one of the most refreshingly original oddities to come along in quite some time – a crime caper, a deadpan comedy, and a fantasy all rolled into one. The soundtrack is rhythmic and infectious yet curiously indescribable, as it rarely features traditional acoustic or electronic instruments. For unconventionality alone, composers Fred Avril and Magnus Börjeson (also one of the actors) may be deserving of an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score.

The film, adapted by directors Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson from their 2001 short film "Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers," tells two separate yet related stories, both of which will cleverly converge in the final act. In the first story, we meet policeman Amadeus Warnebring (Bengt Nilsson), whose very name is the epitome of cruel irony; born into a family of musical prodigies, he grew up tone-deaf and ultimately developed a physical and psychological aversion to music altogether. He desires nothing more than a world of silence. This isn't to say he wants to become deaf. He just wants the music to stop. He's an embarrassment to his family, especially his brother, Oscar (Sven Ahlström), a respected conductor.

In the second story, we meet Sanna Persson (which, conveniently, is also the name of the actress playing her) and her sidekick, Magnus (Börjeson), both of whom were expelled from a prestigious music academy some years earlier for their unorthodox musical philosophies. They both believe that the world is drowning in a sea of bad music. They resolve to compose their own brand of music, the likes of which the city won't soon forget. They recruit four drummers from various musical circles to assist them. Collectively dubbed the Six Drummers, they devise a "concert" consisting of four movements – which is to say, they will trespass into four different city locations and make an orchestra out of the available objects (think an antiestablishment retrofit of Stomp, and you've got it). The first movement is at the hospital, mentioned above. The second is at a bank, in which they use shredding machines, stamps, and coins in harmony. The tellers and customers are never held at gunpoint, but they are forced into being an audience.

The Six Drummers leave a path of vandalism. Warnebring follows it, despite not being taken seriously by his fellow officers or superiors. As he goes from one location to another, led by clues hidden within the names of the movements, he becomes aware of a bizarre aural deficit: He can no longer register sound from any object or person touched by the Six Drummers. Take the hospital patient whose stomach became a drum; when Warnebring tries to question him, all he can see is an angry man moving his lips. He bangs on a bedpan yet hears no metallic clang. He passes a barking dog, and yet no bark emanates from its mouth. As this is happening, he accepts an invitation to attend a concert conducted by his brother. It takes less than twenty bars of music before he must excuse himself, for the sound of the orchestra is like sandpaper to his ears.

I think the filmmakers were wise to not let little things like plausibility get in the way of the screenplay. I would not say the film is an emotional experience, although it certainly doesn't work on the mind. Like a child playing a game of make believe, the story freely bypasses the roadblocks of common sense and rationality and simply is. We're not supposed to question how the Six Drummers got hold of scrubs or bulldozers or diggers or jackhammers (wait until you see how those last three are utilized). We're not meant to analyze the physical or mental reasons for Warnebring's selective deafness. These plot lines are intended to be fun and freewheeling. You might even say the filmmakers move to the beat of a different drum.

I have doubts about the ultimate fate of the Six Drummers, for it seems highly unlikely that true anarchists would suddenly and inexplicably be so compromising in their ways. As for Warnebring, I found his final scene charming yet bittersweet. What he considers a victory, I consider a tragic loss. But who am I question what makes someone happy? More to the point, why should I be critical when it was the only appropriate direction for the story to go in? For anyone who believes the movies have ceased to be unique, "Sound of Noise" will be like a shot in the arm. It's a revitalizing experience, not just as a story but also as a celebration of sound and music. Here is a film in which audiophiles should be just as entertained, if not more so, as avid movie watchers.

-- Chris Pandolfi (www.atatheaternearyou.net)

Have you ever left a movie theater with your feet stamping and your head shaking in rhythm, as if you had a persistence of hearing a Funk drum & bass beat when you just came out of a concert?

No? So let yourself experience « Sound of Noise »! You will follow the adventure of drummers/percussionists determined to perform the piece of the Century: « Music for a city and six drummers », whose four movements will be played in four very different public sites in the city and this despite a musician-hunt, a police hunt which chases the percussionists to each of their illegal concerts.

The directors of this project and these musicians/madmen (Sanna Persson, Magnus Börjeson Anders Vestergard, Marcus Boij Haraldson, Fredrik Myhr and Johannes Björk) drew the attention first with a short film: « Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers » where they took possession of an apartment for 9 minutes. Then the concert/squat took place in the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom and the living room where the percussionists were performing with only day-to-day's objects as instruments in this temporary impromptu in A minor. The movie was produced in part thanks to this short film.

Following the same principle that in the short-film, the musicians use this time everyday objects of the city for each musical « happening »: white stripes on the asphalt, car's engine, containers on the docks, construction's grids, piping, dogs barking, electronic and hydraulic systems, the banknotes that pass through the shredder, ink pads, steam shovel …

They decide to use the city first in order to protest and to rebel against the sound pollution in the city, at least initially. The film is the object, the cause, the means and the symbol of the fight: Down with musical obscurantism! Long live freedom! The most Rock'n Roll and political part in the same time is one scene where policemen arrest all the musicians and another one where we can see the funniest police road check-point I've ever seen (and simultaneously very disturbing): - « What do you have to declare? - I repeat, I do not have drums in my trunk." (As it was cocaine or weapons ...) »

The musician hunt is lead by an investigating officer: Amadeus Warnebring and despite of his promising name, he's allergic to music. He chases relentlessly the drummers until he falls in love...

The soundtrack is so clever in providing alternations between silences, percussionist's innovations, noise pollution the musicians are fighting and classical music which represents traditionalism. The film is it more a documentary about a fantastic and unique concert? There is a story (stories of love on many levels), a fantasy and the director seems to use emotions and scenes like sounds as if it were four guitar chords: going from tenderness to revolt, from fear to laughter in one swipe of fingers.

The inventiveness of the six percussionists, including the composer, goes all the way in ending musical apotheosis when using the most formidable guitar-electric bass ... trying to undermining the noise, pop music in the city, slaying and musical obscurantism.

Amadeus Warnebring was born to a musical family. The only problem early in his life Amadeus the family realize he is deaf. As there is no future in music for him, Amadeus decides to become a policeman. As a detective he is able to function because his ability to read lips, thus he is able to make a career as a detective when we first meet him.

Sanna Persson, a woman with an ambition to do her own kind of music, is not exactly what one would expect. Her music is eclectic and different. She is the composer of a musical project "Music for the City and Six Drummers" a complex undertaking to create music using the most bizarre methods. Helped by Magnus, she embarks on a journey to recruit men capable of playing the most outrageous instruments besides the drums. Their tactics baffle everyone and the police, who consider they are simply terrorists.

This wonderful Swedish comedy was jointly directed by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson. The main idea seems to be questioning our tastes in music. While Amadeus comes from a classical musicians, the great conductor Oscar Warnebring is Amadeus' brother, the creators are merely asking why are we so against to listen to music that appears to be strange to our ears. Sanna and her group want to incorporate everyday sounds into compositions that while different, are not completely horrible. In fact, there are cadences in some of the pieces that are even tuneful.

Amadeus' own world is silence, and yet, he can understand what Sanna and the band are trying to accomplish. Bengt Nilsson gives a good performance as the deaf detective. Sanna Persson appeared in the directors' own "Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers", which seem to have been the basis for this full length feature.

Shot in and around Malmo, Sweden, which the cinematographer Charlotta Tengroth captures for our enjoyment. The music was created by Fred Avril, Magnus Borgeson and Six Drummers. The film does not disappoint.

Sound of Noise is a surreal and ever so slightly barmy Swedish comedy designed to make you look at your household and everyday items in a completely new light. What the film lacks in budget is substituted by the huge ideas incorporated within the story by directors Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson who build a world around the ideals of a fine art project.

Sanna and Magnus are two musical mavericks, determined to break away from traditional convention yet they find themselves frustrated at the small scale impact their projects appear to have on their home city. The first of which is seen as they speed down the motorway pursued by the police. Magnus manically beats the drums in the back of their van whilst Sanna revs and changes gear in time with their signature metronome.

That will give you a heads up of the running theme throughout the film. They want to make a bigger impression with their work by pushing the musical scope of the city, making people stand up and listen to their passionate creativity. The bottom line is they want to dispose of the rubbish music they fear is ruining their soundscape.

Meanwhile Amadeus (Bengt Nilsson), a tone deaf police inspector, picks up on their trail that slowly develops into a personal journey to overcome the years of frustration spent as a side note amongst his own family. His father was a world renowned classical composer and his brother Oscar, a childhood musical prodigy, continues the family tradition as a leading composer in the country.

A familiar cops and robbers theme develops between the inspector and the musicians, although never over complicated or serious enough to detract from the light and fun tone so evident throughout.

The 'musical terrorists' build their movement around four signature pieces of work in the city, incorporating inanimate objects and whatever materials lay nearby. It brings to mind the work of Matthew Herbert, a classically trained British electronic musician who pioneered the use of everyday objects into the modern electro movement.

These set pieces are a joy to behold – wonderful short snapshots of music that are warm, catchy and in the case of the last 'Electro Love' quite poignant.

Firstly they take a famous patient 'hostage' in a local hospital, then proceed to play music in, around and actually on him, using the operating materials and machines to get the beat and rhythm formed. The bank is next; except they do not want to steal the money instead shred it through the machine whilst the sound bounces off the stamps being hammered behind the desks.

Each example gradually grows in scale making the fourth and last by far the most impressive and one of the most original ideas I have seen on or away from film.

Scaling up pylons and across the gigantic electricity lines, they shut down half of the cities power supply then use them as chords to reverberate their final piece deep into the city. The stakes are then raised as they play with the power on, creating a rhythm with the power source so the whole city becomes subject to the throbbing lights played in time. Shops, houses, office blocks and whole streets switch between dark and light in a fantastic crescendo leaving you to wonder how such a small film pulled off such an expansive visual treat.

Dig a little deeper and you could use this as an analogy for the young generation to have their voices heard, something indicated later in the film when the cities musicians are rounded up. I could also sit here and pick out some of the flaws with the characters or plot but there would be no point to that at all.

Just enjoy the feel good factor, stretching the boundaries of your imagination that will leave a content smile on your face as the bossa nova outro sees you through the door.