The Guilty and Suspenseful Sound A film analysis of The Guilty (2018) Written by Robyn Bacon1,2,3,4 1 Cinema Studies Institute, 2Book and Media Studies (St. Michael’s College), 3Creative Expression & Society (Victoria College), 4Alumna of Innis College, University of Toronto The Danish film The Guilty (2018) masterfully builds suspense by taking away one primary sense commonly associated with film—sight. The film takes place over the course of one night after the protagonist—a policeman named Asger gets assigned to emergency dispatch operator duty. As his shift nears to an end Asger receives a call from a woman named Iben who has been abducted. While Asger is only able to help Iben through his telephone headset device he begins working overtime and against company policy in order to secure Iben’s safety. The film effectively builds suspense using diegetic offscreen sound instead of crosscutting. Diegetic offscreen sound is sound that has a source in the story world. This includes words spoken by characters, sounds from objects in the story, and music implied to be from instruments in the story space (Bordwell and Thompson 284). In regard to offscreen diegetic sound, the sound still exists in the story world, but the source of the sound exists and functions outside the camera frame (Bordwell and Thompson 285). Alternatively, crosscutting is an editing technique that cuts back and forth between two different characters situated in two different locations where the action is occurring at the same moment in time. Commonly used in the thriller genre—crosscutting gives strong visual continuity and provides the audience with unrestricted knowledge of story information.
In The Guilty when Asger and Iben speak over the phone the film restricts the audience from receiving visual story information, and instead gives story information to the audience only through diegetic offscreen sound. This makes it uncertain for the audience to understand where Iben is and what she is doing. The audience relies on diegetic offscreen sound that can only imply what Iben is doing physically. In this way, the audience and Asger are learning new story information at the same time—which produces a unique and intensified approach to the creation of suspense. Usually in the thriller genre suspense is created when the audience knows more story information than the protagonist. This story information—usually delivered by crosscutting—is instead supplied by diegetic offscreen sound. Diegetic offscreen sound weakens the linear sense of cause and effect and temporal simultaneity in the film. In turn, this skewers visual expectations and strengthens suspense. Instead of simply seeing cause and effect and temporality on screen, the audience must listen for it. This can trick the audience to doubt their ability to gain accurate story information. After all, seeing is believing but in the case of The Guilty, listening must suffice. Screenwriters’ Perspectives Vol. 2 No. 1 2021
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