Awareness of the Interstellar sound-mix issues have been kicking around since before the Paramount release opened two days ago. (I first complained about it on 10.24, or the day after the first elite-media screening on 10.23.) You’d have to be deaf and blind not to have heard about them by now, but reporters for the trades and the major print outlets have so far been asleep at the wheel. It’s obviously a huge story — a major filmmaker mixes a film in such a soupy and muddy way that people across the nation and in parts of Europe can’t hear certain portions of the dialogue and are tweeting complaints left and right — but for whatever reason the pros at Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, TheWrap, N.Y. Times, L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal and other print publications aren’t touching it.
From HE’s “Actionman,” received today: “You’re not lying. Either the sound mix was terrible or the people at IMAX said turn it up and keep it up because at the Cinemark in Manchester, CT, in their Imax-lite, you could barely hear dialogue that should’ve been heard. I don’t understand how something like this could happen.”
This 11.5 Slashfilm article about Interstellar‘s bassy, soupy, dialogue-obscuring sound mix indicates that people are bitching about it all over the world. I was the first guy to complain about this (i.e., right after the 10.23 TCL Chinese elite-media screening), and a fair-sized percentage of HE commenters suggested it was because I have bad hearing. In any event today I heard from a venerated projection consultant about this issue, and he told me that a “qualified service technician” had applied a fix to the problem in a certain situation. He wouldn’t say what theatre or even what city, but here’s his report:
“On the subject of audio on Interstellar, I have been getting reports that the sound track is mixed such that the dialogue gets lost in scenes of dramatic sound effects,” he said. “This problem does not seem to be related to just the TCL Chinese. In one location the alignment tech boosted the center channel higher than [the] normal cinema spec to bring the dialogue up in relation to the Left/Right channels where most of the effects come from. This made the dialogue more prominent and therefore more distinguishable.
“Normally I would (and might still) argue against changing anything from established industry practices. In this case, I’m withholding judgment. My heart says he did the right thing, but my head tells me he did not.”
Six years ago theatrical viewers of Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar were put through a form of aural hell. Nolan, it was later revealed, had deliberately mixed the sound in a muddy, soupy, music-dominating way that made it awfully difficult to hear the dialogue. I watched it twice inside Hollywood’s TCL Chinese and had trouble with the dialogue both times. I also read that it drove many others crazy. **
“The sound mix in Tenet is pretty awful,” Lloyd has written. “Explosions and Ludwig Goransson‘s soundtrack often drown out dialogue to a point of it being unintelligible. At least one key scene involving some pretty key story points is done during wind-sailing over a crackling intercom system.
“It’s so bad, in fact, that we had to view the movie twice. The sound mixing was that terrible the first time around so it required a second viewing. Our first viewing on the movie was done with a 35mm print, while the second viewing was a DCP [presentation].”
In a Reddit q & a, Nolan’s sound designer Richard King, who mixed Tenet as well as Dunkirk and Interstellar, explained Nolan’s concept as follows:
“Chris is trying to create a visceral emotional experience for the audience, beyond merely an intellectual one. Like punk rock music, it’s a full-body experience, and dialogue is only one facet of the sonic palette. He wants to grab the audience by the lapels and pull them toward the screen, and not allow the watching of his films to be a passive experience.
“If you can, my advice would be to let go of any preconceptions of what is appropriate and right and experience the film as it is, because a lot of hard intentional thought and work has gone into the mix.”
I not only sat through Interstellar again last night, but in the same theatre (TCL Chinese) and almost in the same seat I sat in when I saw it nearly two weeks ago, on Thursday, October 23rd. I’m still of the opinion that this earnestly oppressive, partly breathtaking, level-11 space epic deserves points for reaching out and dreaming big and breaking “bahhriers,” but it’s too confounding and exposition-heavy and generally exhausting, and the dialogue is too often buried under the heavy sauce of Hans Zimmer‘s organ score and is basically too damn hard to hear. I did, however, understand a few more particulars last night, possibly because some Nolan techie tweaked the TCL Chinese sound system in the wake of that disastrous 10.23 screening.
I know now that I have given Interstellar my all, and that I don’t have to ever see it again. Two times = almost six hours = more than enough for the rest of my life. But I’m also glad I did round 2 because now I understand the feelings of those who are basically saying “it’s a mess but a good mess” or “it’s laughable but great for that” or “it’s typically cold and at the same time overly emotional, but in a cool way” because they’re all basically saying “look, it’s not perfect but at least it’s crazy and ‘out there’ in its own deranged way and isn’t that a good thing?”
They’re reacting largely to the film, of course, but also, I suspect, to the first wave of naysayers, some of whom focused on the film’s apparently dashed Best Picture hopes. They want the world to know that they’re more sensitive and perceptive than guys like Scott Feinberg or Tom O’Neil or whomever. Or me.
If, as one or two HE commenters have written, the first wave of internet malcontents went into that 10.23 screening looking to take Interstellar down (an absurd hypothesis — serious online movie hounds always want movies directed by big-name auteurs to succeed), last night’s second wave went into it determined to push back against the first wave. “We hear you, Chris,” many of them were saying last night on Twitter. “We get what you’re going for or at least we get that you went for Something Big, and we’re giving you a pass for laying it on the line and swinging for the fences and wearing your heart on your sleeve. Fuck those shallow Oscar-handicappers…we are in touch with our souls, Chris, and particularly with the soul of your movie, which is emotional and celestial and a little bit cuckoo, which is fine by us.”
No Oscar-handicapping website or columnist wants to say this for fear of Paramount pulling ads, but Christopher Nolan‘s Interstellar (11.5) is clearly the first big bust of the season, esteem-wise. I’m not any different than the others. I’d like a piece of that Paramount award-season revenue. But this is reality, Greg. Nolan’s apocalyptic space voyage epic will make bales of money, I presume, and the geek chorus (led by guys like First Showing‘s Alex Billington) will chime in and a pro forma Best Picture nomination may happen, as indicated by some positive industry reaction. But it’s too much of a frustrating mixed bag to be called wholly successful (an observer at Saturday night’s Academy screening has described the post-screening reaction as “pretty quiet…not a lot of buzz“), and the mixed critical pushback so far makes the likelihood of serious Best Picture contention seem…well, unlikely.
Interstellar is one of those big, rib-rattling, epic-sprawl movies that you only get from determined, well-funded visionaries like…well, like Chris Nolan. And this, make no mistake, is a super-charged time-travel flick that is also very personal. It’s basically about Nolan saying “there’s no place like home, like family, like love”…probably due to a suspicion that he works too obsessively and is missing out on his children’s lives or something along those lines. Sounds like The Wizard of Oz in Space, right? Without the jokes and the songs and the fancifulness, of course. And without, I regret to say, any way to believe in other-wordly realms. Interstellar is quite the wowser throttle ride — you have to see it, of course — but for me it didn’t hang together in a way that felt right or rooted or satisfying. It “played” but it didn’t sink in.
Interstellar is basically a grim story about love, loss, heroism…a down-the-rabbit-hole tale about seeking and adventuring and returning, Odysseus-style. It’s riveting at times. Now and then it’s breathtaking. And at times it is speechy and banal. At times it’s one of those “wait..give me that again?” movies. I just didn’t believe or understand a lot of it. And it has one scene that, no lie, is comically awful. Beware the killer colonist who once dropped in on Che Guevara!
That was my reaction, for the most part. I was “impressed” by it as far as the chops and the eye-filling scenery, both local and cosmic, were concerned and I generally liked the rumble-in-space stuff, but I couldn’t buy into it, man…not really. (Does this mean I’ll lose out on Paramount award-season ads? I’m weeping over this but I gotta be me.) But a friend tells me that Emile Hirsch and Chris Rock and Adrien Brody and a lot of other celebrities who saw it last Wednesday night were really blown away so…you know, don’t let me stop you. (Rock told my friend that he “doesn’t think any film can possibly match it.”) It’ll be Best Picture nominated, I suppose, because the community wants to kiss Nolan’s ass for the same reason it has smooched Spielberg’s ass for the last 39 years. And it’ll probably win two or three tech Oscars. And it’ll make loads of money.
During yesterday’s drive into Savannah from the airport I told a senior Los Angeles-based exhibition executive (i.e., a guy who doesn’t want to be quoted) about the over-cranked, super-bassy sound inside the TCL Chinese that made dialogue hard to understand at times during Thursday night’s Interstellar screening. He said he knows all about that. He said that union guys who were calibrating the sound at a West L.A. theatre plex constructed two or three years ago wanted to heighten the bassy “thromp” levels, and that he and his associates told them “nope, nope…no way.” He knows exactly what bass-thromp does to dialogue. And he made the right call. The plex in question delivers excellent sound. Hearing dialogue is never an issue when I see a film there. I can always hear every last vowel and consonant.
Interior of refurbished TCL Chinese. The muddled, super-bassy, over-cranked sound delivery in this theatre has probably harmed…okay, influenced the critical opinion of Interstellar among L.A. journos who attended Thursday night’s screening. I have already pledged to see Chris Nolan’s film again in a theatre with better calibrated sound.
I’ve also heard from a journalist friend who saw Interstellar Wednesday night at the California Science Center IMAX theatre, and he says the sound there “was exquisite…you could hear absolutely everything perfectly.” He also dropped by Thursday night’s TCL Chinese showing, or actually “bits and pieces of the last 25 minutes of the film and the sound was way overpumped. In fact standing in the lobby we thought the theatre was going to collapse, and I heard complaints from a couple of SAG voters that they couldn’t understand the dialogue, which always used to be the case at the Chinese pre-IMAX.”
I’m waiting to speak soon to Chapin Cutler, the projection and sound guru from Boston Light & Sound who handles projection standards at the Telluride Film Festival, the TCM Classic Film Festival and is now preparing projection for the upcoming AFI Fest. I’m not going to assume anything but Cutler knows his realm cold, and I can guess what he’ll tell me about bass-thromp.
The sound at the TCL Chinese during last night’s Interstellar screening was so bassy and woofer-throbby and aimed at my rib cage that I couldn’t hear half the dialogue. My ears felt left out, not to mention the part of my brain that enjoys hearing words and sentences and…you know, understanding what’s up and putting it all together. And don’t say it’s just me because five or six others were saying the same thing in the lobby after the show. I for one was particularly flummmoxed by Matthew McConaughey‘s dialogue due to his shitkicker accent on top of everything else. I’d hear a word or sometimes a phrase now and then, and sometimes an actual whole sentence or two. But there was no winning. I realized that early on. The atmospheric rumbles and impact sounds and vibrating whomps are top-of-the-line, but too many sound systems in too many state-of-the-art theatres are calibrated so that the shake-rattle-and-roll stuff rules above all. This is the way it unfortunately is today, and for me is frankly another reason to think twice about going to the megaplex. People expect to hear sound so strong and pulverizing that their bones vibrate and their inner organs detach and collapse in a heap. Has anyone in the Los Angeles area been to that 4D Motion FX theatre in Oxnard? This is what a lot of people want these days. The problem is that vibrating rib cages are at war with being able to hear simple speech. I could hear a lot of what’s being said last night — don’t get me wrong. But enough dialogue was obscured or murky enough for the experience to be a general pain in the ass. You know when I’ll be able to understand all of Interstellar? Without having to lean forward and cup my ears or make faces? When I watch it next summer on Bluray with my own home system with my personally calibrated sound bar and woofer.
When was the last time Chris Nolan had no choice but to explore or otherwise settle into a reality realm -- a realm defined by the same terms that all sane earthlings are more or less obliged to live by? The answer, of course, is 2017's Dunkirk. But before that, Nolan's last RR flick (i.e., no exceptional visual augmentation) was Insomnia, which is nearly 20 years old. (It opened at the Tribeca Film Festival on 5.3.22, and commercially on 5.24.02.)
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You know that the sound mix on Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer (Universal. 7.21) is probably going to be hellish, certainly to some extent. It’s going to be a bear, you know this, and yet you’ve been avoiding the act of thinking about it, or more honestly dreading it. You know what’s coming.
There’s only one fulfilling way to watch a Nolan film these days, and that’s at home with subtitles. I truly wish this were otherwise.
Chris Nolan‘s Tenet has been streaming and on 4k Bluray for eight days now. I’ve watched it with subtitles one and a half times so far, and there’s no question it plays much more coherently (and certainly less problematically) this way. But you know what? It tickles and taunts more than it adds up. It still doesn’t make a whole lot of basic sense. I’m sorry but that’s a fact.
I loved the audacious, ahead-of-the-curve, first-time-ever freshness of Tenet when I saw it on a big screen in Flagstaff on Friday, 9.4, but maybe I was extra-enthused because I was so happy to watch a film in a theatre again.
I still love the inverted/backwards shit (especially during that dazzling 747 airport sequence) but the charm of that gimmick has fallen away pretty sharply, you bet.
I only know that subtitles doesn’t really solve the basic Tenet problem, which is the arrogant Nolan himself. I loved Dunkirk but now I’m back to thinking he’s an infuriating filmmaker — a guy whose films will always tax my patience (unless he makes another based-on-history film). It’s a tragedy to know deep down that Nolan will never make a film as engaging as Memento again.
I didn’t realize how badly Tenet was flunking across the board until I read a 12.18 Facebook review by Nick “Action Man” Clement, who is easily the kindest, most obliging, most turn-the-other-cheek reviewer of mainstream commercial films on the planet earth, and certainly since the 2.25.20 death of the big-hearted F.X. Feeney.
Clement’s basic deal is to bend over backwards in order to give a generous coo-coo tongue bath to almost any popcorn flick out there, past or present. It’s not that Clement has no taste, but that he’s unable to suppress the primal love he has for “guy” movies.
In this sense Clement is a dependable brand, just as Hollywood Elsewhere is a dependable place for cranky drillbit truth-telling.
So when Clement pannedTenet a few days ago, I went “holy shit….this means something! Nolan has overplayed his ‘too tricky for school’ routine and wound up shoving a cold banana up his ass….if he’s lost Nick Clement, he’s definitely done something wrong.”
1. Overall I thought this was okay – certainly entertaining in the moment but in the end, not up to my expectations. And it makes me sad to report this fact, as I’ve pretty much loved all of Christopher Nolan’s output up until this point. Merely “okay” is not what I expect from this filmmaker. The Prestige and Interstellar remain my two favorites, Dunkirk was exceptional, and massive The Dark Knight Rises and Inception POWER. But this felt miscalculated.
My theatrical viewing of Tenet a few weeks ago in a Flagstaff Harkins plex was a great thundering high. Big screen, booming sound, small buttered popcorn, extra-comfy rocking chair, first indoor viewing experience in over six months…mother!
Plus I wasn’t thrown by my all-but-complete inability to understand the particulars. (I’d absorbed the broad concepts in advance.) I knew going in that Tenet would defy understanding in the usual sense. I hate, hate, hate Nolan’s arrogant sound-design schemes. I couldn’t understand Tom Hardy‘s Bane, and I couldn’t understand half of Inception, and Interstellar, which I loathed from the very depths of my soul, was even worse. So I went into Tenet with an attitude of “go ahead, make my day…make it all but impossible to understand…I won’t care.” And I didn’t.
But time and again, as I mentioned in my 9.5.20 review, I was acknowledging that I’d never seen anything quite like this before. Excerpt: “I was smiling quizzically and a few times literally guffawing with pleasure. Tenet is all but impossible to fully ‘understand’ (certainly upon a first viewing, and even after reading the Wikipedia synopsis I was still going ‘wait, what?’) but my eyes, mind and expectations were constantly being challenged and blown. Pleasurably, of course.”
Yesterday Variety‘s Owen Gleibermansummed up this reaction as follows: “The film doesn’t entirely make sense, but that’s okay, because even when it doesn’t it’s such a bravura spectacle of head-spinning awesomeness (or something) that our heads are spun…sort of.” Yup, that was the reaction of Old Flagstaff Jeffie. And that’s what I’ll hang onto until a subtitled Bluray or the subtitled streaming version comes along, and then I’ll derive a whole new level of comprehension.
OG: “By the last act of Tenet, which is a grandiose action battle full of explosions that run backward (the sand funneling down into the earth, because those forces are moving in reverse), you can see that the effects are cool, and the idea is cool, but how the logistics of it all fit together remains barely coherent, which kind of limits the fun.” HE: “Yes, it’s curious and limiting, but I knew going in that Nolan was going to pull the same shit he did before.”
OG: “But what I discovered, to my surprise, is that Tenet, in all its high-toned kinetic quasi-obscurity, completed the alienation of the [oppressive COVID] experience. Rather than offering a great escape from the COVID blues, the movie was perfectly in sync with the COVID blues. Which is exactly what made it the wrong film for this moment.” HE: Disagree. Tenet rescued me from that climate of widespread depression outside the Harkin plex. For two and a half hours, I managed to forget the dull, dispiriting gloom of face masks, social distancing, no indoor restaurants, no flying to Europe, etc.
OG: “No, the reason that people are going to want to go back to the movies is joy. That’s what they want to feel; that’s the feeling that sitting at home can leach away. And Tenet, while marketed as a great escape, is a movie so tangled up in itself that it turned out to be as joyless an experience as the very prospect of going to see a movie during COVID.”