Director Sam Green with his recording equipment in an anechoic chamber in 32 Sounds (Free History Project)

It can be easy to forget the importance of sound in cinema. The image on the screen tends to overwhelm, and so a few documentary filmmakers repeatedly feel the urge to direct our attention to the ear instead of the eye. Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound was a fine introduction to the many uses of sound in film, replete with useful examples and anecdotes that are amusing while expanding our understanding of cinema’s complex auditory dimension.

32 Sounds is not about sound in movies but about sound period. It is best described as a celebration and an investigation of the aural experience. Director Sam Green structures his documentary around 32 different sounds that he has found worthy enough to immerse his viewers in, around which he spins his meditations on hearing, listening, and sound itself.  His voice, as a narrator and commentator, encourages audience members to close their eyes at times and to get up and dance at others, and is a constant throughout. More than once, he expresses the hope that viewers are sitting in a theater with a great sound system to experience the movie in the fullest possible way. He has stated, in the press notes, that he hopes it will “move people sonically the way other films move people visually.”

Certainly, Green has made the effort to present a variety of different subjects. The first sound we hear is that of the womb. Annea Lockwood, an experimental composer, appears several times, making a recording of a pond and listening to the night outside her home in the country. Christine Sun Kim, an artist who is deaf, reveals her unique relationship to sound, which she explores in her work. There are longer passages along these lines, then also short snippets, of dogs barking, of someone plucking the strings of a piano, of the classic THX promo (you will recognize it when you hear it). And, of course, there is music. One idea Green returns to is that audio, when recorded, remains long after a person has passed away, and muses about how, in its ability to preserve what was once thought to be ephemeral, the invention of the phonograph changed our relationship to sound.

Certainly, there are a few sequences (underwater noise, for instance) that provoke fascination, and I will fully concede that something may have been lost due to my not having watched this in a theater (though I had a good set of headphones). Nevertheless, Green doesn’t actually provide a dramatically varied soundscape, so the film does not really become the celebration he wants it to be. Also, his observations, though from the heart, are perhaps too much so. They verge on sentimental, and the thinking is often muddled or rudimentary. In a characteristic moment of obviousness, for instance, he reminds us that “It’s easier to listen when you can’t see.” In others, he can become cloying when he is moved to discuss the ability of sound to bridge barriers. Often, his manner is like an adult chaperone who is far too involved at a school dance. Jokes aside, he is far too present as narrator and commentator to allow us to really listen.