32 Sounds (2022 | Cuba, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, United States | 98 minutes | Sam Green)
It’s easy to take our senses for granted. Vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, they all fall into the background as we move through our lives. While the absence of one or more doesn’t make us any less or more human or capable of well-lived lives, it can cause a rift. Just experiencing a small loss such as COVID cases temporarily losing taste and smell can be shock or at the very least a gentle reminder not to take these wonderful bodies of ours for granted. 32 Sounds brings one sense in particular into sharp focus tantalizing and teasing every aspect of a most complex sense: hearing. The lack of it, the intensity of it, the sensitivity of it, at any moment we could be swept away or pulled back in with a jerk.
When I first started watching I was a little distracted and didn’t really tune in when documenter Sam Green strongly suggests you put headphones in. Then he reached a discussion of binaural sound and I had to stop, connect my headphones and take it all in. What an experience it was, and I highly recommend you do the same right from the start. Typically having the director insert themselves into a film is off-putting and ego-driven, but this time it helped me to “hear” the world not through his eyes but through a collaborative experience. Yes, some of the topics were driven by his own life and pervious work but only to give context and a starting point to understand something so philosophical, emotional, and tactile all at once. What a massive undertaking.
32 Sounds premiered in person on March 11th and virtually on March 12th at SXSW Film 2022. Be sure to check out all the SXSW 2022 Sunbreak Coverage