I tend to praise and feel a certain respect for films that
can create a powerful and engaging story using a limited number of settings,
characters, or that based their success on implied and off-screen devices.
Usually films that are this limited, also limit the scope of their story,
perhaps focusing on the life of a single characters, or even a single
event. But to attempt to create a
suspenseful, time -travel, sci-fi, puzzling film only using an empty room full
of people, and the exact dialogue and hints at the right time, this is just
admirable. Having no crazy CGI, extravagant futuristic technology, or nothing
that really depict the future, “The Sound Of My Voice” is effective in creating
doubt, ambivalence, and a fluctuating dose of skepticism and faith. This
hypnotizing film structures all its existential questions around one
messiah-like woman and her followers, making this story more about the current
state of humanity than about a future apocalypse. The characters are exposed, and
we are shown the predetermination everyone, even the most secular of
intellectuals, has to be seduced by a cult. Our need to feel like there is an
order even within chaos, this fear of uncertainty makes us gravitate to whoever
claims, and can prove, to have the answers.
We begin our journey with Peter (Christopher Denham) and
Lorna (Nicole Vicius), a couple who have gone thru many steps in order to
infiltrate a cult, and who now have gotten to the final stage: meeting their
leader. The film throws you right into this moment, we skip all the steps that
were taken to get here, and we only learn more about this couple through some
abstract “home video footage” clips, and from what Maggie (Brit Marling)
exorcizes from them. Maggie is the driving force of this underground circle
that revolves around the assumption that she comes from the future and can save
“the chosen ones” from what is coming. Neither the audience nor Maggie’s
followers ever see any tangible proof of her claims; however, we also never see
anything that for certain proves she is lying. This mind game is so well
developed it’s hard to truly choose a side in this puzzle. With time Peter
forgets about her gimmicks to try to record Maggie’s activities, and dives
right into her preaching. She sees something in Peter, something that we never
find out whether it’s true or just him acting. Lorna seems to draw the line when Maggie asks Peter to
kidnap a certain girl she must see. That encounter is perhaps one of the best cliffhangers
ever written, its screams SEQUEL PLEASE.
There are
plenty of unanswered questions in the film to create a follow up (indeed the
film is pure questions, and many little bits of fake truths or fake lies).
Nevertheless, if a sequel its developed one side must be chosen, its Maggie a
con artist escaping from a life of crime? Or is she really a messenger from our
future who perhaps the government wants to keep quiet? I believe its hard to
keep this story going without giving up some of the ambiguity, but if they find
a way to keep this up longer then I will give a standing ovation. The film is
so simple in the way it affects the audience and how it can create a science
fiction mood with nothing really there but the cast and the story. The cast is
good, Denham as “Peter” and Marling as “Maggie” are perhaps better than the
rest of the cast, but they are the ones who carry the film. Peter is the
inquirer in search of exposing this woman, but he becomes her most compliant
adept, and Maggie is this otherworldly presence of whom we can neither confirm
nor deny her past.
This is a great film, in just over 80 minutes it presents
this magnificent complexity that can take other films 3 hours of plot and
subplot to develop. Perhaps it does feel a bit rushed at times, but when the
hypnotizing moments and confrontations come it seems as if time could last
longer in the film. A great achievement from writer/director Zal Batmanglij,
“The Sound Of My Voice” will have questioning what really to believe. Just when
you think you’ve figured it out something else will come to flip it around and
keep you guessing. Overlooked by many during its theatrical release, the film is
out on Blu-ray/DVD on Tuesday.
Grade A.
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