Review: Touch the Sound
Monday, February 7, 2011 at 8:03PM Rating: 4/5 Stars
In his 2004 documentary, Touch the Sound, filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer takes us on a sensual journey into the life of Evelyn Glennie, the deaf percussionist with a passion for the world of sound. The film is an indepth exploration of her life and her relationship with sound. It invites the viewers to rethink our falsely compartmentalized understandings of the "different" senses — in particular, that of hearing. The film is a captivating experience that should be watched by all, particularly those of us who take our hearing for granted.
Riedelsheimer is a good fit for the film, as he has a talent for capturing the intangible. Some of his other works, such as Soul Birds and Rivers and Tides, also portray complex and intimate relationships between creative individuals and their surroundings. His strength lies in humanizing his subject's talents while also not hesitating to showcase their skill. Glennie is not portrayed as a struggling victim of circumstance who overcomes her challenges with a superhuman gift for feeling the vibrations of sound. It wouldn't be appropriate, since Glennie repeatedly asserts that she doesn’t see herself as such. Instead, she is presented as a regular person who has adjusted her senses by reconceptualizing her notions of hearing. Touch the Sound pulls off the telling of a motivational story without a "motivational story" kind of feel. Instead, Riedelsheimer offers a multisensory experience that highlights the interconnectedness of our senses and the malleability of our relationship with them.
The film explores different aspects of Glennie’s life and how she experiences and embraces sound. The crew follows her around while she visits and immerses herself in the sights and sounds of New York City and Tokyo, her teaching sessions with deaf children, a spellbinding improvisational recording session with avant-garde musician Fred Frith, and to her childhood home in Scotland. All the while, Riedelsheimer’s patient directing skillfully weaves together soundscapes with cleverly juxtaposed images, constantly reminding the viewer of the fundamentally physical nature of sound. Touch the Sound has an intentionally synaesthesic feel, one that serves to drive home Glennie’s underlying messages: that sound is a felt thing. That the body is an incredible machine that is capable of adapting to drastic change. That such changes can be as much of an advantage as a disadvantage. She sees herself as someone who can do what she does simply because she has become increasingly “open” to the world of sensory information around her — a capacity that we all have within us. This openness, she insists, is at the core of her being.
Glennie’s personal history is explored during her visit to her family farm in Aberdeen, Scotland. There, she describes her childhood and her close relationship with her father (also a musician). She began to lose her sense of hearing at the age of eight and was fully deaf by the time she was 12 years old. Glennie explains that having already adapted to her hearing loss, she never felt as though she had a “disability” until a school councillor informed her and her parents that she was completely deaf and would have to attend a school for the disabled. To her fortune, her father, who was aware of her ability to adequately adapt to her condition, immediately rejected the councillors advice and urged her to carry forward. From then on, she further developed her sense of touch in order to perceive the sounds around her, eventually becoming a professional percussionist. As she correctly states, sound is "merely a form of touch" — one that is typically, though not exclusively, detected with the ears. She has since become a world-renowned musician and teacher of the deaf, making a living by rattling people’s preconceptions about hearing, sound, and their senses in general.
This story of personal triumph is managed creatively by Riedelsheimer, who takes what could be a clichéd tale of empowerment and instead draws the audience into a new perception of the world they don’t realize they already live in. Many musical performances are interwoven with her personal history and trips around the world, such as her impromptu jam sessions with street performers in New York, a xylophone piece in a Japanese restaurant, and a wild rooftop drum-off in the middle of an appropriately noisy construction site. While these performances are fantastic, her intimate relationship with the feel of sound is most evident during her improvisational recording with Fred Frith filmed in an abandoned sugar factory in Dormagen, Germany. Their shared childlike energy and creative fascination with noise makes for several ear-tickling performances. The range of musical styles exhibited in Touch the Sound keeps the viewer on their toes, delightfully unsure of where Glennie’s journey of sound will take them next.
It’s tempting to say that Touch the Sound is a "must-see" for music fanatics, but given its wide range of focus, the film should appeal to all. Reidelsheimer’s patient directing and flawless editing seamlessly combines biopic, live performance, inspirational tale and soundscape without dwelling on any particular approach for too long. The film’s simple message shines through its eclectic focus: that the human senses are capable of drastic adaptation so long as one reconceptualizes traditional, compartmentalized views of our perceptions. Touch the Sound should not be missed as it empowers all who watch it, regardless of their sensory capacity.
Documentary, Evelyn Glennie, Fred Frith, Hearing in Review
Reader Comments (1)
How did I miss this documentary? I remember when Glennie got rave notices for performances in Canada. I will watch this, for sure, sounds wonderful. Great review.
Editing comments: minor points:
ages should be numeric - 12 years old
world-reknowned - no k
the viewer - pluralize to viewers as you have a plural verb
reconceptualise - use "z" as you do with compartmentalize following