Two hours of my life I will never get back

Park City

This morning we saw an absolutely beautiful film. This afternoon we saw the antithesis: a completely inane experience lasting an hour and 45 minutes but feeling more like three. Another world premier at this year’s fest, Noise had a lot going for it. It’s an Australian film that’s a feature debut for Matthhew Saville, a guy who’s done a lot of short film work over the past few years. The basic story centers around a young police constable who’s assigned a night shift at a mobile police station placed near the scene of a pair of heinous crimes that occur in the opening minutes of the film. The twist is that Graham McGahan, the police constable, suffers from a chronic, debilitating hearing problem thought to be caused by a possible brain tumor. The first fifteen minutes of the film were fantastic. Lots of suspense, lots of really nice textural detail and a huge potential for some really amazing things to happen. And then…. it went nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Great setup and then an hour and a half of some of the most boring cinematic work ever produced. I’m really disappointed. And I feel really bad for the director, considering he got up before the screening and blubbered about what an incredible dream it was to be screening his first feature film at Sundance. After the screening finished, 80% of the audience left before the credits had even finished rolling. The Q&A must have been depressing with so few people remaining to congratulate the director on his work. Most people, like Kit and myself, felt the need to bold as quickly as possible so as to avoid any additional exposure to such inane tripe. Unfortunately… I’d say stay the hell away from this film *if* it ever finds an American distributor (and that’s a big if).