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Richard Lukacs’s no-budget, no-crew, no-AI, eight-minute Sound of the Doldrums is an accomplished work that is all the more impressive for its production conditions. The story of a musician deafened by an accident in which he also lost his wife, the film is an experimental narrative using step printing and stylised editing. These features become additionally pleasurable under the influence of its aggressive score.
There are no dialogues for the first third of the runtime. When words are used, they are for voiceover narration whose delivery immediately announces a brooding character straight out of comic books. In fact, the visual style—its partial black and white colour scheme and the editing—is strongly graphic, often appearing as if it were drawn in 2D. It shows the accident in snatches, the most haunting images from Ian’s (Lukacs) memory. And because it is memory, it redraws and compensates. Ian sees in his mind what he could not have seen on that night sitting next to his wife, Carrie (Samantha Marcellin). He sees how she might have recognised the oncoming end in the two seconds of grace it afforded her. Ian sees it all from varying perspectives, attempting to master his own devastation while simultaneously steeping in self-loathing. Yet wound invites salt, and Ian’s tragedy is compounded by a complete loss of hearing—except for those sounds that he does not want to hear. Appropriately, the sound design is rich and layered.
Combined with the score and the staccato editing, the film invites multiple viewings, and for serious viewers, a thorough dissection. Lukacs has himself shot, edited, composed the score, and designed the sound, on top of writing, directing and producing the film. This would have been an objectively well-made film even without that extreme commitment. It is sharp, moody, intricate. In a word, memorable.
Sound of Doldrums is your overachieving sibling, but in this case it is difficult to resent it when enveloped in its sheer texture. The climax is not altogether surprising but the interplay of cacophonous sound and terrifying silence results in the kind of tire-screeching relief that brings its own torment. A music video and an anti-hero origin story rolled into one enthralling runtime.
Watch Sound of Doldrums Short Film Trailer
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