Reviews

Bodysong

The perfect fusion of sound and vision

By BRETT MICHEL | December 31, 2007

3.5 Stars

BODYSONG Nothing less than the human life cycle.

Produced in 2002 by FilmFour and the UK Film Council, Simon Pummell’s nearly wordless exploration of nothing less than the human life cycle — from birth through growth to sex, violence, death, and dreams — is only now reaching Boston, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts. The timing couldn’t be better: it’s playing concurrently with Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, and there couldn’t be a more perfect coming-out for an electrifying new voice in movies. I speak of the musical contributions of Jonny Greenwood, the BBC’s composer-in-residence and a member of Radiohead. When Anderson first viewed Pummell’s film, he found Greenwood’s trance-like score revelatory, and that paved the way for his collaboration with Greenwood on There Will Be Blood. Which is not to discredit the story that Pummell, a short-film maker with a background in animation, has assembled, using 100 years of archival footage, some of which may be familiar but most of which will be new. From more than 400 sources, he’s created an operatic narrative of a single human life, a near-perfect fusion of sound and vision. 78 minutes | MFA: January 9, 12, 13, 19, 23

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