Noise

By Susan Hryckiewicz   

If allowed only one word to describe the movie, it would have to be 'Australian'. Writer and Director Matthew Saville has honed and tempered his skills in the unforgiving arena of Australian television series to capture a way to tell it as it is. He and his ensemble cast led by Brendan Cowell have brought a very down-to-earth essence to the movie that draws the audience into the story and specially to the characters. They are average people, going about their ordinary work, drifting through their lives and mostly not wondering if they have purpose. We know these people; we see them every day; we are them.

Noise is essentially a police drama but the undertow from the ebb of suburban life gives it a flavour unusual to this genre and particularly in cinemas. An horrific crime has been committed. The facts presented seem inexplicable and where expectation would dictate that the story surf the frenetic activity of investigation in wave upon crashing wave of theory and suspects, we are instead dropped into the almost stagnant ponds of a backwater suburb. Welcome to the night shift, and nothing ever happens on the night shift, right?

Noise will attract a wide range of audience reaction. Some will consider it dull as dishwater and just as nourishing while others will find and appreciate some hidden depths. The majority will be mildly satisfied without being sure exactly why. The basic story is enough to make it an average movie; the power is in the nuances of the superbly portrayed performances and the subtext of their interaction.

There are no superheroes, no brilliant leaps of deduction or amazing gut instincts as happens in solve-the-problem-in-one-hour television shows. The characters are flawed individuals and what unfolds is due to their isolation from each other and how they deal with that. These droplets of humanity are drawn together by a force greater than themselves, the killer who seems to be lurking the railway precincts. In converging into a larger pool they lose a little of their defining edges to find solace and comfort from the community against the spreading stain.

As seems the trend recently, authority figures are not shown in a good light until the story dives beneath the surface and reflects the dull flow of routine and due process from the underside. The pivot of the story is a young, low-grade, policeman (Cowell) suffering tinnitus as he struggles through his work and home life. Despite his condition, he is sent to gather information from the community, to listen to their woes while trying to distill information that may lead to the solution of the crime. With the long lonely hours of his watch, his thoughts become introspective bordering on the philosophic. The theory that he shares one night about heaven and hell is an interesting result.



Anyone who has lived in a major Australian city will feel instant kinship with the style and delivery. I suspect that inhabitants of large cities overseas may find it similarly identifiable if the movie reaches off-shore distribution.  

I have friends who are extremely squeamish and if they were going to see this movie I would have to give them key cues as to when to close their eyes. Most of the squeamish points are reasonably predictable and for general audiences I would rate this about 3.5 out of 5.

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