The new film Tuner opens with the sound of three notes tolling. An Eb, to be exact, soon nudged upwards to F. (No, I do not have perfect pitch, like our hero in the film: I consulted my guitar.) That opening alone is an early indication that we’re not in standard formulaic film land. For his debut film, director and co-writer Daniel Roher has ventured into the rarified terrain of piano tuners, a highly specialized and vintage field, so far protected from the clutches of AI-driven obsolescence.
This is anything but a dry dive into that esoteric world, but a story laced with thriller elements and compassionate inquiry into the realities of characters with hearing ailments and extreme sensitivities. Niki (the perfectly-pitched Leo Woodall, also seen in the excellent Nuremberg), is the hyper-hearing young apprentice of the hard-of-hearing Harry (Dustin Hoffman, spot on as always). Niki suffers from an acute case of hyperacusis (check out the fascinating story in the New York Times last week), a rare condition in which the world’s sound world becomes painfully injurious.
Niki’s condition makes him ripe for the refined — and in some ways impossible — task of detecting tiny sonic details on the tuning job, yes, but also in his newly acquired skill as a safecracker. The latter talent earns him the nefarious and evil interest of nasty criminal types with access to private homes and their safes. Skullduggery and bad juju ensue, as does a companion subplot and love story with a young pianist (Havana Rose Liu) in the conservatory.
In an age when fresh cinematic angles are refreshing and rare, this film finds a new expressive avenue to go down. More broadly, Tuner earns points by taking its place in the small but intriguing list of strong films in which the power and realm of sound are critical. Topping the list are such titles as Coppola’s The Conversation, Sound of Metal (also about a hearing-impaired protagonist) and, perhaps most sound-centric of all, Jonathan Glazer’s remarkable Zone of Interest, in which the eerie sound of Auschwitz unravels our senses, far beyond the auditory canal.
Ultimately, Tuner begins to lose its focus — its sense of tuning, if you will — in the third act, as plausibility goes south (what are the chances a peripheral character in the narrative turns out to be the victim of a plot-turning theft?), and a rather cheesy cross-cutting climactic montage pulls us back into the cozy-creepy zone of genre cushiness. It doesn’t help, either, that the musical elements ring false, and our hero’s spin around “Tenderly” feels like wooden look-at-me showboating.
But Tuner has many virtues going for it and is well worth a look — both as a twist on the crime flick genre and as a window on a field of interest seldom considered romantic enough to warrant screentime. Piano tuners live and work in a world of their own, and as Niki soon recognizes, boast a job which brings them into private spaces and potential compromises thereof.
I’m guessing most veteran tuners have tall tales to tell. I’ll have to ask Santa Barbara’s tuner-of-choice, Jim Connolly, but I doubt that he has tales this dastardly and life-threatening. Stay away from safes, Jim, despite temptations of gaining filthy lucre!
Tuner is currently playing at SBIFF’s McHurley Film Center, sbifftheatres.com. View trailer here.
