Underneath the Sound
BENEATH THE SOUND is a beautifully shot, soulful symphony of a short film that will leave audiences completely enraptured by the love of music, of playing, and the heartache that goes with devastating loss.
Our hero character is a talented violinist who is losing his hearing. Shattered by this sad reality, he tries to hide it and keep his hearing loss a secret. But with a major performance looming on the horizon, this film is a sensitive drama about losing what we most love. In the case of our main character, music is everything. Without it, he has nothing.
Like Beethoven as he faced his own deafness, this haunted, dark sounding, emotional rollercoaster leads our character to listen to the sound in his mind and lose himself in the music, even when he can’t hear. He turns to rock and roll, blasting the sound with the hope of hearing the beat just a little bit longer.
BENEATH THE SOUND is film is a collection of beautiful decisions. From moments of a train squealing past early in the story, to the silence of the train later once our character has lost his hearing, the sound design and direction is excellent. The sound cuts in and out, and at first, I thought it was a technical glitch on my device. But it was a carefully calculated decision by the director to capture the dull, deafening and muted sounds of an imagined hearing loss, and it was extremely well done.
Because I am a screenwriter, I can’t help but watch films and evaluate story and character, the way a sommelier tastes wine. BENEATH THE SOUND was a beautifully brooding story with a character we can sympathize with, who clings to the one thing he loves most that he is about to lose forever. What makes the stakes even higher is that a high profile concert looms on the horizon, and his hearing loss is a secret he keeps from everyone, except possibly, a fellow musician and woman who he might some day love.
With storytelling like this, we are in the hands of a masterful director. He uses imagery and sound design to tell this story, and the performances are heartfelt and sensitive. When a fellow musician discovers his secret and encourages him to keep playing, we see that for every door that closes, another opens, and a new friendship and possible romance may be in their future. We also glimpse into his reflection of a small child who is being tested for deafness at the same clinic, and the despair of seeing deafness in someone who has never experienced the joy of hearing. Despite the sadness and overwhelming despair that one feels from watching this film, I felt grateful and enriched for having seen it. It is one of those films that helps you to appreciate the small things in life that we so often take for granted, and realize that the miracle of hearing and love of music is not such a small thing after all.
