Sound Of Noise

"It must have been wonderful for you growing up in such a talented family," people keep telling policeman Amadeus Warnebring (Bengt Nilsson), better known as the brother of the famous composer Oskar (Sven Ahlström). "Do you play an instrument?"

There's no polite way for Amadeus to answer. The fact is that he's tone deaf. He hates music. He hates the way it dominates the spaces in which he is forced to move - the same notes, the same bad jokes, repeated over and over again. Whilst he is fond of his brother and would like to be a better friend to him, the thought of attending his big forthcoming concert makes him miserable. But now Amadeus is faced with a new challenge. A gang of musical terrorists have come to his city, determined to perform a symphony of sound that threatens to turn orderly lives into chaos, and only he, with an instinctive understanding of what is at stake, can stop them.

Veering between socio-political satire, slapstick comedy and bizarre fantasy, Sound Of Noise is a film that lacks nothing when it comes to ambition. That it takes on more than it can effectively handle is no surprise. Conceptually it's fantastic but the industrial music on which it depends isn't anything like as strong or as original as it needs and the percussionists who perform it likewise struggle to convince as geniuses. Nevertheless, if one can set aside those concerns and allow for its inevitable limitations, there's a great deal to enjoy. At a metaphorical level it works well, using music to explore the balance of order and chaos in human relations, and there's a hint of romance well played between Nilsson and 'terrorist' leader Sanna Persson (as a version of herself). It's really Nilsson's performance that carries it, enabling a necessary sympathy with a man who struggles to find pleasure in life and whose ultimate dream may be especially hard to relate to for those drawn to this sort of film in the first place.

Sound Of Noise is a truly individual film that may well achieve a degree of cult status. The subtitling into English is extremely well done, preserving numerous Swedish puns, and there are also lots of musical jokes for those with musical backgrounds to enjoy. For those no better equipped to appreciate these than its hero, well, it's got a good beat.