Film — Touch the Sound

Documentary film about profoundly deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie by the same director who made the earlier documentary Rivers and Tides about Andy Goldsworthy's art. Unfortunately, sound is not a visual medium, so we cannot just view what is done.

This does lead to some longeurs where all we have is Ms Glennie looking contemplative at various locations around the world, as the background noises are turned up — people walking, tapping their feet, dragging cases over tiling, that sort of thing. It takes a long while before there is even any speech; and music comes very late in the proceedings.

The scenes where she was instructing a deaf girl in percussion was fascinating; but, like Goldsworthy, the interviewer encourages his subjects into vague mysticism about their art.

Gobsmacking moment — her brother, with a gentle Scots accent, barely stronger than hers, was subtitled, presumably for USan audiences.