Sunday, October 5, 2008

Movie Review: Noise

ThinkFilm production has a new Tim Robbins movie available for rental, "Noise."

Car alarms are annoying. Just one car alarm going off is enough to send many people into a state of incoherent babbling. Imagine multiple cars or trucks going off simulatenously or consecutively. Madness, shear madness, could result. And this is what sends David (Tim Robbins) over the edge. The movie is somewhat autobiographical in nature, according to the NYT article. David, seeing the lack of respect in the world around him, feeling assaulted by urban noise, takes matters into his own hands, becoming a crusader for silence, the Rectifier.

While not a movie with "geographic" themes self-evident, one scene stands out to me. David is being followed around by a part-time writer, who was an earlier victim of one of David's anti-noise tirade. David had thrown a rock the the storefront of her father's furniture store because the burgler alarm going off at 3am. He has moved into an apartment as his wife has become intolerant of his anti-noise campaign methods. As David and this reporter talk about David and his alter-ego, the Rectifier, David is seen stabbing the wall with a pushpin.

I liked the scene (the rest of the movie was so-so) as the casual observer may not recognize that David is pushing a pin into an aerial photograph of New York City. He was using aerial photography to map his exploits! In fact, it wasn't just one aerial photograph. Stuck to the wall above a worktable was a partial flightline of aerial photography for New York City, with several colored pushpins jabbed into various locations across the city.

I thought that was kind of cool.

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