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A clever and skillfully made film, "Euphonia" is a movie that at first feels formless and experimental but gradually gains narrative shape and heft as it goes on. Danny Madden wrote, directed and edited the picture, as well as leading the intricate sound design.
A number of other Maddens took part, including Will Madden as the never-named main character. A non-descript high school teen, he schleps from home to school to work at a big-box store without much enthusiasm or purpose.
One day on a whim, he buys a high-quality digital sound recorder from the store where he works and begins playing around with it. He and a buddy go into the city for a night, and he has fun recording the music and commotion of the urban landscape. Feet slapping against payment, a street poet unspooling his prose on a grimy corner, discordant mechanical plonks — he's fascinated by it all and records it all.
Soon, the protagonist is taping virtually everything in his daily life. His friends find it a bit odd but go along. The boy, who parcels out his words ungenerously, only responds to their puzzled queries by saying the recorder is a prop that "helps me remember."
One female pal (Maria Decotis) chastises him for offering to play the recording of his breakup with his girlfriend — though she does so playfully, as she is clearly gearing up to be the replacement.
The overlapping sounds are beautiful and eerie, and at first we think this is just going to be a technically impressive jaunt marrying the boy's visual journey to the auditory one in his head. But then strange things to start to happen. He finds he can manipulate what he hears, just as if pressing buttons on his device — for example, dubbing over a boring teacher's lecture with a George Carlin comedy skit he previously taped.
Things get deeper, and grimmer, as his hobby turns into obsession and eventually a prison.
At a little under an hour in length, "Euphonia" is more a concept film than a true feature. It has a novel idea and then takes it as far as it can reasonably go. But this is the sort of sly, witty filmmaking that gets a young crafter noticed. Remember the name Danny Madden, and keep listening.
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