“The Guilty” Keeps Your Ears Open

Release Date：Oct/19/2018
Genre：Crime/Drama/Thriller
Director：Gustav Möller
Cast：Jakob Cedergren

Viola's Rating：8.7




A feature film can be done without any sound, but when it does include sound, it’s critical to have an amazing sound production team. “The Guilty”, a 2018 Danish film, was selected as the Danish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards, with only one main actor. All the other characters only appear with their voices. Its clever twist and unique setting also attracted American actor Jake Gyllenhaal that he purchased the copyright to produce and star the American remake.

Similar to “Cellular”, the story of this dramatic, crime thriller is about a police officer, Asger, who has been assigned alarm dispatch duty, enters a race against time when he answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman.

What differentiate “Cellular” from “The Guilty” is that “Cellular” demonstrates the process of the rescue mission, but in “The Guilty”, the audience has to use their imagination to build up what might be happening by themselves. This attribute makes it much more nerve-wrecking. With all of the shots taken within the police station, “The Guilty” is produced with low budget, and the most of the crew is the 30-year-old Sweden director Gustav Moller’s grad school classmates, so it’s not only like a class reunion, but also a kind of experimental flick they made.

Besides, the meaning of the title “The Guilty” is hidden in the dialogues, making it a motion picture about salvation. Meanwhile, with the characteristic of talking on phone, moviegoers get to take a second look on what prejudice and stereotype we might have with people we’ve never met. A script simple as a short picture, director Moller turned it into a feature film with his peculiar storytelling skills.

“The Guilty” applies awesome sound production to generate the most authentic dialogues and sounds over cellphone or telephone. There are a bunch of different details regarding to all the sound effects, for example, answering machine, background noise, voice mail, etc. Also, all the people Asgar talks to on the phone are from all walks of life, voice of man, voice of woman, and even voice of little girl are heard throughout the film. With different situations, audience can hear different layers the crew created by making use of changing volumes, left and right channels.

From the first shot of the ring tone with Asgar putting his headset on which was shown in the trailer, to the last shot before Asgar hangs up the hands-free phone, the tension is all over the police station along with the theater. Since moviegoers aren’t omniscient, they act as detectives with Asgar to unveil the secret on the other side of the telephone transmitter.

Although “The Guilty” is a low-budget production, and it’s only 88 minutes, it’s a must-see, especially those who enjoy analyzing and paying attention to all the sound editing, effects and mixing in a satisfying flick.

Picture Credit: IMDb