movie review for the sound and the fury 2014

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The Sound and the Fury review – failure to do justice to Faulkner's masterpiece

W illiam Faulkner's profound, intricate masterpiece has been rendered both trite and insipid in this adaptation by actor/director James Franco . Faulkner's 1929 novel describes the decline and fall of the Compson family of Jefferson, Mississippi over 20 years at the beginning of the last century. Here, Franco attempts to recreate the book's impressionistic style and complex structure. He makes a fist of it, but in concentrating so much on the art he fails to give the viewer any story or characters to care about.

Franco himself plays Benjy Compson, the youngest child of the clan, from whose point of view the opening third of the story is told. This poses the first challenge for both actor and director as Benjy has mental health problems, unable to express himself in anything other than an ursine roar. In Faulkner's text the reader is allowed into Benjy's mind of course, but on screen we must deduce his feelings from the outside. Franco uses elucidatory flashbacks to do this; Benjy watching something he shouldn't have, Benjy hugging a wedding dress. When that is not enough he employs the disembodied voice of a child, apparently that of a juvenile Benji, to whisper the odd lyrical phrase ("Quentin loves the shadows"). In keeping the viewer up with the story, it just about works, but of the feelings churning within Benjy's lumbering frame, we are left largely ignorant.

The same can be said of the characters afforded actual dialogue. The patriarch of the Compson clan, as played by Tim Blake Nelson, speaks only in the briefest platitudes ("I love each and every one of you") or screeds of Faulknerian sturm und drang ("victory is just an illusion"). Why, we're not really sure.

His only daughter, Caddy (Ahna O'Reilly), whose illegitimate pregnancy is at the heart of the novel's moral quandaries, could be an independent spirit tragically ahead of her time, but she is given no opportunity to show us beyond a brief moment where she admits sex can be pleasurable. Youngest child Quentin (Jacob Loeb) meanwhile is a moping drag whenever he appears. At least the eldest, Jason (Scott Haze), the villain of the piece, looks the part with rat like features and hollowed cheeks. Like everyone else in his family though, he spends less time showing his workings than he does shouting the name of a sibling and chasing them across a lawn.

Of the many possible themes; the tension between religion and secularism, between land and money, of the inexorable nature of decline, there's not a sniff. There are, however, wink wink cameos for Franco's pals Seth Rogen and Joel McHale. It also has to be said that, when awarding himself the role of Benjy, it's difficult to imagine that the words 'Oscar prospects' didn't pass through the director's mind.

The Sound and the Fury is not a cynical film though, just ham-fisted. So bogged down by form, Franco fails to get his head up enough to think about content. He does get one thing however, and that's Benjy's sensual awareness, his ability to connect with the sublime. As the 33-year-old man (or 'three for thirty years') rolls a lily between his hands or watches a solitary match burn, we see him engaging with feelings everyone else has buried, the better to concentrate on day-to-day propriety. It's a tantalising glimpse into what this film might have been, but it's very brief indeed.

• Toronto film festival 2014
• James Franco
• Toronto film festival

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The Sound and the Fury

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James Franco (Benjy Compson) Tim Blake Nelson (Father) Scott Haze (Jason Compson IV) Loretta Devine (Dilsey) Ahna O'Reilly (Caddy Compson) Joey King (Miss Quentin) Jacob Loeb (Quentin Compson) Janet Jones (Caroline Bascomb Compson) Dwight Henry (Roskus) Logan Marshall-Green (Dalton Ames)

James Franco

A look at the trials and tribulations of the Compson family, living in the Deep South during the early 20th century.

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The sound and the fury.

Directed by James Franco

Man is the sum of his misfortunes

A look at the trials and tribulations of The Compson siblings, living in the deep south during the early part of the 20th century.

James Franco Tim Blake Nelson Scott Haze Loretta Devine Ahna O'Reilly Joey King Jacob Loeb Janet Jones Dwight Henry Logan Marshall-Green Jim Parrack Kylen Davis Keegan Allen Seth Rogen Danny McBride Val Lauren Brian Lally Jack Kehler Nat Wolff

Director Director

James Franco

Producers Producers

Vince Jolivette Caroline Aragon Miles Levy Lee Caplin

Writer Writer

Original writer original writer.

William Faulkner

Casting Casting

Matthew Morgan

Editors Editors

Ian Olds Joe Murphy

Cinematography Cinematography

Bruce Thierry Cheung

Production Design Production Design

Kristen Adams

Art Direction Art Direction

Eric Morrell Jerel Levanway

Composer Composer

Tim O'Keefe

Sound Sound

Geordy Sincavage

Made In Film-Land Rabbit Bandini Films New Films International

Releases by Date

05 sep 2014, 06 sep 2014, 23 oct 2015, releases by country.

• Premiere Toronto International Film Festival
• Premiere Venice Film Festival

101 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Ben ★

Here's how James Franco's brain works:

He releases an adaptation of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying in 2013—a muddled embodiment of his delusions of grandeur; an altogether unfocused and confused mess that was adapted from one of Faulkner's   most accessible major works. It was, quietly and unsurprisingly, poorly received by most everyone.

Then, confounding any sense of human reason, Franco decides to adapt The Sound and the Fury —Faulkner's second-most difficult novel (behind Absalom, Absalom! , also his best), which is really saying something. And he does it the very next year.

Who does that? Who thinks they can do that?

As you would've assumed, it was received even more harshly than the first, and I'm delighted to follow suit. Stop directing movies, Franco, and go back to advertising how many classes you (don't really) go to. Maybe get another professor fired.

Review by Josiah Morgan ★★★★★ 5

The greatest film of the decade so far. A heightened state of awareness and consciousness: Franco's aural design comes at us from all angles, too many sounds piling on top of each other... The Sound And The Fury is an entirely linear narrative that Franco abstracts until it is no longer a story of character and time but a story of texture - the feel of wood, and of soft grass, and of slipping away into sleep after waking in the early hours of the morning, and of your family gradually forgetting you, and of a culture you cannot and never will understand, and the smell of your own sweat, and the smell of the air before an earthquake, and…

Review by megan ★

physically painful

Review by Josh Kadish ★½ 2

I'm not naming names, but someone gives a performance in this that rivals Ben Stiller's moving portrayal of "Simple Jack."

Review by Nathan Not Nate ½

James Franco's high school video project for Faulkner is looking rough

Review by Josiah Morgan ★★★★★ 2

One long, slow fade into irrelevance, stepping into the mind of another and another and another and another then it stops. Franco's performance is the one I am most drawn to at this point in my life, a complete encapsulation of everything that makes humans.... human. Time is all our perception allows. Time itself is your misfortune.

Review by Brendan Michaels ★★★½ 1

The first act is one of the most beautiful pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen. While the rest of the film doesn’t live up to that glorious first 30 Minutes it still is a truly interesting and creative endeavor. Franco definitely shows that he has directing chops. Only makes me more excited to see how he evolves as a director.

Review by Josiah Morgan

Insurmountable; often so uncomfortable it forces viewers to reckon with their own (undoubtedly complex, variegated, polar) responses to the film (no wonder Franco's directorial efforts are so reviled). Franco understands that Faulkner's language is so complex and literary that he must leave Faulkner's words almost exactly as they are. The biggest accomplishment is to allow such a word-based piece to function with the mechanics of a living, breathing, moving film. Of course, the central idea in The Sound And The Fury is that of a crumbling family and the patriarch at the head of it, but Franco wisely diverts from this narrative (to be fair, Faulkner did this first) - exploring personal tragedies experienced by individuals that supercede a shared experience, a more disturbed experience; one that sets the future at odds with the present.

Review by Jonathan Novak ½

Seth Rogan and Danny McBride look like they’re in an episode of Drunk History.

Review by SUIYA 穗雅 ★★

Congrats 🥳 You read a deep book and you want to brag you understand it so you make a movie that is based on a work beyond your skillset and ultimately the movie nothing but a disgrace to the original work❣️Go girl, I see you James 🤩

To the people who read this novel and gave it 5 stars: What the fuck? How can you gloss over the minimal importance placed on Caddy? Caddy is the star of Faulkner's work. A woman who used her own terms, her sexuality, to gain independence and freedom. Despite not having her own section, Caddy is at the centre of the Compson men. The tree climbing scene is one of the most mesmerising parts…

Review by Meg ½

James Franco really took

It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of  sound and fury, signifying nothing

a little too seriously huh

Review by daniel ★★★★

This is very good, and even if it weren't, I'd still rather see Franco tackle the "unadaptable" than some hack prestige director. The only real problem for me was Quentin's segment; Franco omits the stream-of-consciousness sections that made the novel a favourite of mine. But some things are bound to get lost in the medium shift anyway, so it's hardly an unforgivable sin.

Franco approaches the narrative in a fairly straightforward manner but does a great job at translating Faulkner's prose into images, particularly via uncomfortable close-up shots. Every moment that Benjy appeared onscreen could have been a disaster, but none were.

I think the critics are entirely wrong about Franco here. Maybe it's because they see him as some pretentious loser who makes invisible art. But I don't get that image of Franco from The Sound and the Fury at all. If this film really is (as the critics say) Franco misfiring, I can't wait to see his successes.

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Toronto Film Review: ‘The Sound and the Fury’

By Andrew Barker

Andrew Barker

Senior Features Writer

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While his ambitions frequently exceed his reach  — sometimes by a substantial distance  — James Franco gets an undeserved amount of grief for his various auteurist projects. It’s hard to think of another matinee idol so eager to spend his cultural capital on ventures that more reasonable, less imaginative movie stars would consider pure folly, and in an increasingly risk-averse Hollywood, that’s nothing to sneeze at. Franco’s second adaptation of a seemingly unfilmable William Faulkner novel within the last year and a half, “The Sound and the Fury,” is certainly a folly, failing to capture the weird, entrancing, often maddening ambiance of the great writer’s elliptical masterpiece, and its surfeit of half-baked film-student flourishes and needless cameos occasionally give it an amateur-hour feel. But Franco nonetheless shows improvement over 2013’s “As I Lay Dying,” and well, it’s hard to fault him for trying.

Published in 1929, Faulkner’s novel skips, stream-of-consciousness-style, through the calamitous history of the Compson clan, a once-noble Mississippi family gone to seed, with four sections told from four different perspectives, a structure Franco retains here. In the first, the mentally challenged Benjy Compson (Franco) struggles to understand the world around him as he’s marginalized, and finally castrated, by his increasingly unfeeling guardians. In the second, the fragile intellectual Quentin Compson (Jacob Loeb) commits suicide during his freshman year at Harvard. In the last two sections  — combined into one by the film, to no great detriment  — the cynical Jason Compson (Scott Haze), one of the most loathsome characters in all of literature, battles the family’s longtime servant, Dilsey (Loretta Devine), and his rebellious illegitimate niece, Quentin (Joey King), for dominance over what’s left of the Compsons’ good name.

Casting an outsized shadow over all of this is the lone Compson sister, Caddy (Ahna O’Reilly). O’Reilly has a thankless task here, as Caddy is the sort of character who looms so large precisely due to her absence, glimpsed as she is only through splintered memories. To Benjy she’s a luminescent guardian angel, to Quentin a tragic, sublimated love interest, and to Jason a “fallen woman” whose behavior cost him a career. On the page, her character attains an almost mythic resonance; onscreen, she comes across as a central-casting Southern belle from some lesser Tennessee Williams play.

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Unlike Martin Ritt’s long-lamented 1959 adaptation, Franco is generally quite faithful, cutting little from the book in terms of narrative incident. But to adapt a novel like this, one needs to find a proper cinematic correlative for its distinctive narrative structure, and Franco’s attempts to merely mimic it fall short. (Masterpieces of modernist literature, often far less concerned with the story than the telling, repeatedly present this trap for overly faithful adapters, with Sean Walsh’s 2003 “Ulysses” adaptation, “Bloom,” representing another noble victim.) Repeated leitmotifs such as Benjy’s “Caddy smelled like the trees” can be hauntingly poetic in print, but become increasingly silly when repeated again and again in voiceover.

Quentin’s story, which suffers the most cutting  — particularly regarding his encounter with a mute Italian girl, a subtly significant scene in the novel which makes almost no sense as depicted here  — never really finds its center. The more straightforward final section presents more of a standard Southern Gothic vibe, but Haze plays Jason as an almost cartoonish pantomime villain.

There will be some who chuckle at Franco’s turn as Benjy, and it’s easy to see why: While admirably unself-conscious, his howling, simpering and drooling through prosthetic zombie teeth frequently veer into the grotesque. Of course, Franco is simply being faithful to the world of the novel, where the character’s mental deficiencies were seen not as a medical condition, but as a physical embodiment of the Compson family’s decline. But that doesn’t make it any less distracting to watch.

Relying on handheld cameras and claustrophobic close angles, Franco does attempt some Terrence Malick-style dream imagery to help finesse the jumps from past to present, sometimes successfully. Franco buddies Seth Rogen and Danny McBride have small, ill-advised cameos.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 5, 2014. (Also in Venice Film Festival — noncompeting.) Running time: 101 MIN.

• Production: A Rabbit Bandini Films presentation. Produced by Caroline Aragon, Lee Caplin, Vince Jolivette. Executive producers, Nemis Hason, Sezin Hason, Straw Weisman, Amy Beecroft, Jamie Hormel.
• Crew: Directed by James Franco. Screenplay, Matt Rager, from the novel by William Faulkner. Camera (color), Bruce Cheung; editor, Ian Olds; music, Tim O’Keefe; production designer, Kristen Adams; art decorators, Jerel Levanway, Eric Morrell; costume designer, Caroline Eselin; sound, Lisle Engel; assistant director, James Gerber; casting, Matthew Morgan.
• With: James Franco, Joey King, Scott Haze, Loretta Devine, Tim Blake Nelson, Ahna O’Reilly, Jacob Loeb, Kylen Davis, Shawntae Hughes, Seth Rogen, Danny McBride.

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The sound and the fury, common sense media reviewers.

James Franco's messy Faulkner adaptation has mature themes.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Each human's struggle is unique to his or her

Parents are cold, self-absorbed, lacking empathy a

Pent-up anger permeates the story; characters are

Some nudity. A naked man and woman are shown in th

Abusive and obscene language in numerous scenes: &

Alcohol is used and abused throughout; the patriar

Parents need to know that The Sound and the Fury , directed by and starring James Franco, is a movie with mature themes and moments of great tragedy. The film is based on a 1929 novel by Nobel Laureate William Faulkner. It's set in the Deep South in the early years of the 20th century; racism is a way of…

Positive Messages

Each human's struggle is unique to his or her life and background. What appear to be small incidents can have profound consequences. A lack of compassion and communication can lead to emotional disaster.

Positive Role Models

Parents are cold, self-absorbed, lacking empathy and wisdom. Women are treated as objects with reckless sexual drives to compensate for their status; they cannot earn respect and have no independence or authority. Though the Compsons live in a southern town still rife with racism, an African-American housekeeper is a loving caretaker with far more insight and concern than the parents. She and her family are the only positive role models.

Violence & Scariness

Pent-up anger permeates the story; characters are quick to explode with that anger. Several fistfights, a few severe and some between siblings. A developmentally disabled man appears to attack a little girl. A confused man threatens an opponent with a gun. A grown teen girl is spanked. Spoiler alert : A young man is castrated (action off camera but implicit), and a man commits suicide by jumping from a bridge.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some nudity. A naked man and woman are shown in the throes of sexual intercourse; the man is seen from the rear; the woman's breasts are visible. Sexual behavior, including an unmarried young woman's pregnancy, are crucial to the plot. A mother and daughter are both depicted as using sexuality as a form of rebellion. Incestuous desires lie just beneath the surface of some scenes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Abusive and obscene language in numerous scenes: "damn," "idiot," "Jesus," "whore," "bastard," "asshole," "bitch," "goddamn," the "N" word. One use each of "f--k" and "c--t."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Alcohol is used and abused throughout; the patriarch of the family is portrayed as an alcoholic. A young man is force-fed alcohol at a wedding. Smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Sound and the Fury , directed by and starring James Franco , is a movie with mature themes and moments of great tragedy. The film is based on a 1929 novel by Nobel Laureate William Faulkner. It's set in the Deep South in the early years of the 20th century; racism is a way of life, and women are second-class citizens. Family dysfunction is at the heart of the story, resulting in some violent scenes (fistfights and beatings), sexuality (repressed sexual urges as well as a scene in which a naked man and woman are caught in "the act"), alcoholism, harsh and racist language ("whore," "bitch," "f--k," the "N" word), and cruel treatment of a developmentally disabled man. The Faulkner book was unorthodox in terms of style and language of the time, using stream of consciousness to illuminate characters' innermost thoughts. In bringing the book to the screen, Franco has chosen unorthodox cinematic devices as well. The constant extreme close-ups, frequent jumps back and forth in time, scenes in soft focus, and shaky camera movements, which were meant to be true to the original, may instead be intrusive and confusing. Not for kids. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Mostly set in 1928 in a fictional Mississippi county, with many flashbacks to earlier times, THE SOUND AND THE FURY tells the story of the Compson family, members of the once prosperous and respected Southern aristocracy. The film is divided into three sections, each named for a Compson son -- Benjy ( James Franco ), severely developmentally disabled, on his 33rd birthday; Quentin (Jacob Loeb), a sensitive, bookish Harvard student on a single day during which tragedy strikes; and Jason (Scott Haze), the eldest, on the day in which his evil character and boundless greed finally defeat him. Driving all the stories is the fourth Compson sibling, Caddie (Ahna O'Reilly), a warm-hearted rebel of a girl, whose conduct and personality deeply affect each brother. Along for the ride is an African-American family, dedicated longtime servants who stand in stark contrast to the Compson's destructive dysfunction. Alcoholism, unwed pregnancy, thievery, castration, suicide, cruelty, and intimations of incest play a part in this metaphor for the post-Civil War decline of Southern values and status.

Is It Any Good?

Despite director-star James Franco's sincere efforts, this adaptation is confusing, loses focus, and simply is not very good -- it's even laughable at times. What's meant to be "edgy" is actually overwrought. Acting that's meant to be naturalistic is heavy-handed. The handheld camera movement, constant use of extreme close-ups, and pervasive flashbacks don't clarify or emphasize; they intrude. And the ugliness of the subject matter -- a dysfunctional family, repressed sexuality, mental deficiency, meanness -- is unrelenting. Just as the Faulkner novel's challenging writing and puzzling style met with little acceptance from the general reading public when it was published in 1929, Franco's film adaptation likely will most appeal to a very narrow audience. Not recommended, even for mature teens.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how the Compson family may actually represent the American South. Compare the Compson's loss of status, money, and way of life to the losses incurred by Southern society for decades after the Civil War.

Benjy is severely developmentally disabled. Did the film's techniques help you understand his thoughts and feelings? In what ways has society changed in its attitudes and treatments of a boy like Benjy? In what ways is it the same?

Each brother's relationship with Caddie is distinct. What did you learn about Caddie through each of those relationships? Find out what "catalyst" means. How is Caddie the "catalyst" to events in the story?

For teens who have read the book upon which this film is based, how does the movie compare?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 23, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : June 28, 2016
• Cast : James Franco , Tim Blake Nelson , Ahna O'Reilly
• Director : James Franco
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : New Films International
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Book Characters , Brothers and Sisters
• Run time : 101 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : May 8, 2024

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The Sound And The Fury Review [TIFF 2014]

Prior to James Franco’s first adaptation in 2013, no one had taken on the daunting task of adapting a William Faulkner novel for film since 1983’s A Rose For Emily . Successfully adapting Faulkner is nearly impossible, and Franco learned this the hard way as scathing reviews for As I Lay Dying surfaced after its premiere. One would hope that Franco would have learned from that disaster, but less than a year later, the filmmaker is back with his adaptation of Faulkner’s most esteemed novel, The Sound and the Fury .

There are many reasons why the revered American author’s novels are often called “unfilmable.” While they are certainly experimental and cerebral, the most difficult part about adapting a Faulkner novel is capturing the stream-of-consciousness style of writing he often used. To elaborate, many of Faulkner’s novels are written in first person perspectives, with their narrator’s thoughts written down exactly as they are conceived. The author makes no note when their narrator’s mind jumps to something else, and we as readers are left to decipher their thoughts.

The Sound and they Fury follows the downfall of the once aristocratic Compson family over the span of thirty years. The film is split into three chapters (four in the novel), with each chapter following one character. It opens on Benjy Compson (Franco), the youngest of the Compson boys who is shunned due to his unidentified mental disability. With false teeth, constant drooling and a seemingly never-ending moan, it’s hard to take Franco’s performance of the tragic character seriously.

The second chapter concerns Quentin Compson (Jacob Loeb) on the day he plans to end his life. This chapter is perhaps the most abridged of the three, cutting out the novel’s only heartwarming moment and leaving the audience to feel no sympathy for Quentin.

Finally, the third chapter sees the tirades of Jason Compson (Scott Haze), a despicable man who wants nothing more than to bring misery upon his family.

There are really only two compliments that can be made to James Franco when it comes to The Sound and Fury . Firstly, the film is surprising quite faithful to the novel’s plot and tone. The second is that it is a definite improvement over Franco’s last attempt at Faulkner. Aside from that though, I can’t find much to say that’s positive about the film.

Faulkner’s classic is a difficult read to say the least, so I guess that Franco at least matched him there, as The Sound and the Fury is often a nearly unwatchable film. Between the claustrophobic close-ups and the ridiculously over-the-top performances, it’s hard to imagine how Franco ever thought this adaptation was a good idea.

Admittedly, he tries hard to capture the poeticism of Faulkner’s prose, and while it was a valiant effort, we are left with a final product that feels unpolished and self-indulgent. In his novel, Faulkner was able to seamlessly move between thought and action, whilst always capturing a sense of realism. Franco’s attempt to imitate this falls flat, and the closest thing we have to poetic writing is the obnoxiously repeated voiceover that “Caddy smells like the trees.”

During the second act, it almost seems as if The Sound and the Fury will find its footing. It initially appears that there may actually be some subtlety in the performance of Jacob Loeb as Quentin. But rest assured, this is just absent-minded acting.

One can say that Faulkner is unfilmable, but any work will be unfilmable when it is being adapted by a talentless director. In this case, the fault of the film’s issues stem completely from Franco and not at all with the difficulty in Faulkner’s writing. Hopefully, after two failed outings, the actor will learn to leave Faulkner’s masterful work alone. Although knowing him, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him try his hand at adapting one of the author’s works again.

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The Sound and the Fury

• A look at the trials and tribulations of the Compson family, living in the Deep South during the early 20th century.
• The lives and passions of the Compsons, a once-proud Southern family caught in a tragic spiral of loss and misfortune. Based on the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner --considered among the 20th century's greatest works--"The Sound and The Fury" encapsulates the universal themes of social injustice, forbidden love, and the death of honor. — Anon

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REVIEW: “Sound and Fury” Signifies Everything, Riveting Doc on Cultures, Hearing and Not

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REVIEW: "Sound and Fury" Signifies Everything, Riveting Doc on Cultures, Hearing and Not

by Andy Bailey

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Now showing at New York’s Film Forum and set to be released nationwide by Artistic License, “Sound and Fury” screened during the New Directors/New Films series last April where Andy Bailey reviewed the film for indieWIRE.]

Josh Aronson ‘s “ Sound and Fury ” surprises on a number of levels, most notably in its refusal to serve as a routine triumph-of-the-human-spirit documentary about deaf people transcending their handicap. Billed as a new film about the communication wars of the deaf, Aronson’s thoroughly engaging doc examines the controversial cochlear implant (a surgical procedure that restores some level of hearing to the deaf) and its volatile influence on three generations of an extended family from Long Island, the Artinians, for whom deaf identity is either celebrated or bemoaned.

Some of the Artinians are outspoken advocates of the device, others worry it will create a legion of robots. Among its intended recipients in this family are an infant and a five-year-old girl. The procedure’s rate of success isn’t guaranteed, which gives the cochlear skeptics in the family more fuel for the fire. What’s important to consider in “Sound and Fury” is that the device’s advocates and detractors come from both the deaf and hearing worlds. You’d think those living in utter silence would give their left foot to hear again but a number of the Artinians are willfully deaf, having accepted, if not embraced, their deaf identities.

Doesn’t language determine who we are, even if it’s sign language, they argue? Nonsense, proclaims an elder Artinian who isn’t deaf, and who can’t forget how hard it was to raise deaf kids in a hearing world that refuses to learn sign language. Children shouldn’t grow up in isolation, grandma maintains.

One of the skeptics in the bunch is Peter, a deaf computer technician on Wall Street whose plucky five-year-old daughter, Heather, decides she wants a cochlear implant during the opening minutes of the film — she doesn’t want to be a misfit among kids her own age and you certainly don’t blame her. As you watch Heather’s navigation into the hearing world, to see if the surgical procedure is the right option for her, “Sound and Fury” takes a detour into the nebulous world of children’s rights.

Heather’s parents don’t want her to get the implant — they’ve found happiness in the deaf world, so why can’t she? But at what point is it Heather’s decision? To what extent does a body belong to a child? Meanwhile, Peter’s brother Chris and his wife Mari discover their baby is deaf and decide to implant the infant with a cochlear device, stirring up yet more hostility from the deaf Artinians who argue that a child is not a guinea pig, that perhaps he was born deaf for a reason, and that deafness need not be a handicap.

“Sound and Fury” triumphs as a moral debate because it’s so keen on exploring every possible angle of the Artinians’ deeply existential dilemma. The film is refreshingly bias free. Aronson spends ample time showing us the positive merits of living in a non-hearing culture (the Artinians are a happy, well-adjusted clan of whom many have turned their handicap into an advantage) so that when a child does get implanted, and experiences sound for the very first time, we don’t feel moved by an excess of emotion to race out and donate half our incomes to science.

“Sound and Fury” starts off a bit like some clinical medical documentary exploring a innovative new surgical technique — something you might find yourself watching on the Discovery Channel . But it confounds expectations and raises fascinating new questions about cultural identity in general — and not merely among the deaf.

[ Andy Bailey is a freelance writer living in New York City.]

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Sound and Fury

What to know.

This documentary presents its opposing views in an even-handed yet emotionally engaging manner. Critics say it will provoke much thought, as well as emotions, in the audience.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Josh Aronson

Jaime Leigh Allen

Scott Davidson

Ruthanne Gereghty

John Griffin

Barbara Herel

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Although many commentators will no doubt immediately compare the new WW II epic "Fury" to Quentin Tarantino's brilliant "Inglourious Basterds," largely because both films star Brad Pitt as a heavily-scarred, drawling Army man leading his men in a quest to kill as many Nazis as possible, it is actually closer in tone to a straightforward and un-ironic guys-on-a-mission tale along the lines of " The Dirty Dozen " or "Where Eagles Dare," with a heavy dollop of gruesome bloodletting depicting the true horrors of armed conflict that have been de rigueur for the war movie genre in the wake of " Saving Private Ryan ." It may sound like an interesting approach for a modern war film, but it doesn't take long to realize that writer-director David Ayer has spent more time adding flesh to his battlefield sequence than he has in fleshing out the screenplay. The end result, while technically impressive, is a dramatically bloodless affair, despite the gallons of gore on display.

Set during the waning days of the war, with Allied forces marching through Germany on the way to Berlin and the Nazis pulling out all the stops—including putting kids into battle and hanging those who refuse to fight—to stop them. Pitt plays Sgt. Don "Wardaddy" Collier, the commander of a five-man Sherman tank crew that has been together since North Africa, and who he is determined to see survive to the end of the war. His men include the religious-minded gunner Bible ( Shia LaBeouf ), the Hispanic lead driver Gordo (MIchael Peña) and the borderline scumbag mechanic Coon-Ass (Jon Berenthal). As the story opens, they have just lost their second driver in battle, and at their next stop, they take on a new man in Norman Ellison ( Logan Lerman ), a wet-behind-the-ears type who has only been in the war for a few weeks as a typist and who has never fired a gun before, let alone served in combat.

Needless to say, the other members of the Fury crew are not impressed with the new guy and are even less so when he winds up barfing all over the place while cleaning up the blood in the cab left by his predecessor. Things get worse when Norman chokes during his first confrontation in a move that leads to the grisly death of another tank commander in their column. Eventually, he proves his mettle and begins to mesh with the team at last and Wardaddy even takes him out during a brief stopover to an impromptu rendezvous with a couple of German women ( Anamaria Marinca and Alicia von Rittberg) to relieve him of his virginity. After an ambush that wipes out the other tanks that they are traveling with, Fury finally breaks down, but before it can be repaired and the five men are placed in the seemingly impossible position of trying to single-handedly stave off the arrival of 300 SS troops.

Ayer is best known for writing and/or directing such gritty cop dramas as " Training Day ," " End of Watch " and this year's brutally idiotic Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle " Sabotage ," and, with this film, he takes a giant leap forward in terms of scope and ambition, but only generates middling results. When it comes to the details, Ayer excels—he convincingly evokes the look and feel of this period in history and also does a decent job of suggesting how a quintet of people who would likely never even acknowledge each other in other circumstances can forge together into a single working unit in times of duress. The action sequences are also nicely staged, with one battle in which the smaller but faster Sherman races around to fight off a larger but slower German Tiger tank offering some genuine thrills.

The trouble with "Fury" is that while stocking up on all the little details, Ayer has failed to provide much of a narrative for them to hang upon. The film may remind some viewers of the kind of thing that one might have seen on the bottom half of a double-bill in 1943—the storyline is trite and unsurprising, the dialogue is almost always just a little too on-the-nose, and the climactic standoff against the approaching Nazi forces feels too contrived for its own good. In those aforementioned B movies, that wasn't such a problem because they usually clocked out at 80 minutes or so and moved quickly enough so that viewers usually didn't notice such flaws. "Fury," on the other hand, clocks in at 134 minutes and it makes you feel every one of them in ponderous detail. (The sequence with the German women starts off nicely enough but goes on forever before finally arriving at its inevitable payoff.) Speaking of ponderous, the film is, between Steven Price's oppressive score and the cacophony of combat, so noisy that if there was an Oscar given for Most Sound, it would be the clear front-runner.  

On the acting front, Brad Pitt is good—of course, he is almost always good—but never quite finds a way of approaching his character that doesn't call to mind his indelible performance as Aldo Raine in " Inglourious Basterds ." Likewise, his co-stars turn in decent-enough performances (though LaBeouf's attempts to grizzle himself up via darkened teeth and an especially unfortunate mustache may inspire a few bad laughs early on), but the characters are so paper-thin and devoid of any shading beyond their one approved character trait that they aren't able to do much of anything with them to make them live or breathe. Since we have not been given any particular reason to care about these particular characters, other than the fact that they are not Nazis, the final conflict and the personal sacrifices they make wind up having precious little dramatic impact.

"Fury" isn't so much a bad movie as it is a fairly unnecessary one. From a technical standpoint, it is occasionally quite impressive and fans of the WWII genre as a whole might find it to be of some interest, though those with weaker constitutions may want to give it a second thought considering all the blood and guts on display. From a dramatic and emotional perspective, however, it just sort of lumbers along without ever generating a real sense of interest in what is happening on the scene. If only Ayer had spent a little less time on the physical aspects of this project and given a little more thought to the story, characters and dialogue, he might have been able to truly do "Fury" honor instead of giving viewers just another war potboiler.  

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Film Credits

Fury (2014)

134 minutes

Brad Pitt as Wardaddy

Shia LaBeouf as Boyd 'Bible' Swan

Logan Lerman as Norman Ellison

Jon Bernthal as Grady Travis

Scott Eastwood

Jason Isaacs

Xavier Samuel as Lt. Parker

Michael Peña

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