Chime

Given the title of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's latest, it's tempting to organise the changes in perspective that Mutsuo Yoshioka's cooking teacher, Matsuoka, experiences around the strange, shrill notes that assert themselves on the film's soundtrack. An attentive audience might scour the short film's sound design, in search of the specific note or reverberation that triggers the changes we are privy to. Is there, as one of  Matsuoka's students believes, a Chime of activation that turns off certain parts of the brain in those that can hear it? Of course Kurosawa's film is packed with all manner of surging, overlapping uproar: waves that travel far beyond their source, just waiting to be deposited inside the heads of those unlucky enough to be attuned to them. Viewed with headphones, this din is oppressive and inescapable, a bubble that batters the viewer from the left and right stereo channels. 

The clatter of empty cans, as they leave plastic bin bags bound for recycling drop-offs, is transformed from series of light, musical clinks into a thunderous, all-consuming cacophony; a white-noise waterfall of unwanted physical contact. Similarly, passing train carriages blast dimmed classrooms with dancing light and rumbling, screeching racket. In Chime all the ambient, receding tones have been cranked up, taking on an aggressive shape and demanding alertness or attention. Following the disastrous demonstration of an invasive thought by the student who swears he can hear uncanny music, the amount of people attending Matsuoka's lessons shrinks dramatically. All that remains is Hana Amano's Akemi, another unhinged young person who rabbits on about perceived or invented slights; broadcasting relentlessly to her seemingly passive lecturer. Unfortunately for her, Matsuoka has recently discovered that the sight of a kitchen knife slowly disappearing into the base of teenager's skull wasn't something that he found particularly alarming.