REVIEW. In TUNER, the sound of silence is both a blessing and a curse.

Leo Woodall in Daniel Roher's Tuner.

"Tuning a piano is about bringing harmony to chaos. You need to be okay with the imperfection."

-Niki White, Tuner

Niki White (Leo Woodall) was once a child piano virtuoso before hyperacusis (sensitivity to sound and environmental noise that causes intense physical and/or emotional discomfort), left him unable to tolerate normal every day sounds, including music. We meet Niki as a twenty-something adult working as an apprentice piano tuner to Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), who was a friend of Niki's late father.

Just what caused Niki's auditory disorder and his father's death are unclear, as director/co-writer Daniel Roher seems more interested in Niki's present situation, so Niki remains remains a curious enigma: a quiet observer of the world around him, a once promising musical prodigy now reduced to working behind the scenes to provide the perfect audio atmosphere for other musicians.

Not surprisingly, Niki is a loner and we see him early on moving through his day, catching quick bites at fast food restaurants, sipping endless cups of coffee and soda while driving Harry's van to the next job. Sometimes his evenings include dinner with Harry and Harry's wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh). Marla, a spry and spritely balabusta, looks after Harry with care and chutzpah, chiding him for losing his hearing aids and making sure he doesn't oversalt his food. When Harry admits he hid the auditory buds in their home safe, but doesn't remember the new combination, Niki offers to try and crack their small lockbox.

Watching a YouTube video on safecracking, Niki discovers his hyperacusis is actually an asset when listening for the tiny modulations that reveal a safe's combination. A few days later while on a job, Niki puts his newfound skill to work helping a security team who happen to be at the same house where he is tuning a piano.. When he realizes that this security team is running an undercover theft ring (re: providing security to local businesses and private homeowners only to use its access to steal various valuables), Niki doesn't quite know how to respond.

Uri (Lior Raz), the security team leader, pays Niki handsomely for his assistance, but Niki still leaves with ambivalent feelings about what he's just done. Then Harry suddenly takes ill and, when Marla reveals their enormous medical debt, Niki decides to help his dear friend and mentor and accepts Uri's offer to go on more nefarious safecracking jobs. If you're even a casual viewer of crime thrillers, you already sense this may not end well.

Of course, there's a romantic interest involved: Niki has two "meet cute" encounters with a young pianist named Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), who is also alone and searching for acceptance as a celebrated composer's intern at a New York music academy. They bond over their mutual love of classical music and an understanding of how music is created, though Niki and Ruthie's individual isolation and past heartbreak keeps their budding romance from blossoming. Instead, they tentatively circle around the inevitable connection they both feel.

For those who are not musicians or who are not familiar with the nuances involved in composing a song or refining a performance, a good chunk of the movie may be tedious. My husband, who loves classical music but is not musically inclined, found the dialogue between Niki and Ruthie fascinating and left the theater with lots of questions for me (a classically trained organist) about everything from piano tuning to preparation for a musical performance. Everyone might not have that kind of reaction, though I would argue there is enough here to hold the interest of even those non-musicians.

As I watched Tuner, I couldn't help but feel that Roher and Robert Ramsey's script was written like a fugue, where a single musical theme is introduced, then re-introduced and imitated with multiple, overlapping voices. Here, Niki's struggle with hyperacusis is complicated/enhanced by his safecracking skill, his desire to help Harry and Marla, his growing love for Ruthie, and the ethical conflict working for Uri. All of this culminates in a beautifully overlayed series of scenes that juxtaposes the beauty of Ruthie's recital with the chaotic danger of Niki's secret work.

Roher does a fine job making this complex story work by mixing up the camera work: sometimes framing with clear precision the art of piano tuning and the intricacy of safe cracking, then using a hand-held camera to mimic the frenetic pace of Niki's dual career. On top of that, he cleverly uses musical montages to complete the narrative, creating the kind of seamless storytelling you might imagine if listening to a Bach fugue, layering plot lines on top of each other until the disparate threads of the story are interwoven in harmony.

This is Roher's first feature film. He previously won an Oscar for the documentary Navalny (2022), and you can see how his penchant for the melancholy is used to poignant effect. Everything from tender moments between Niki and Ruthie to intense situations at crime scenes are played with restraint, drawing the audience into the story, rather than keeping it at arm's distance.

I found this movie riveting to watch and to listen to, as every sublety, every shade, every inflection is important to the arc of Niki's journey. Roher's use of close-ups as Niki engages in safecracking is particularly effective: we can read a range of emotions on Woodhall's expressive face as he moves from assessing the difficulty of each task through the process of identifying the combination to the final resolution and successful opening of each lock. Nothing here is exaggerated or overdone, and the silence of Niki's work is underscored by noise that surrounds him, his sensitivity to movement. The delicate balance of sound and silence not only defines what he does - in piano tuning or safecracking - but determines whether he can accomplish either.

Leo Woodhall, probably best known for his work on the Netflix mini-series, One Day (2024), Season 2 of The White Lotus (2022), and the movie Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2021), is captivating on screen. Last year, he played a supporting role as Sgt. Howie Triest, the German-born American soldier who served as an interpreter on the Allied psychiatrist team during the Nuremburg trials in Nuremburg. His cherubic face belies darker, sometimes sinister behavior, yet he retains the kind of vulnerability necessary for a character like Niki whose backstory is never revealed, only suggested by the choices he makes.

The supporting cast, from Hoffman's curmudgeonly Harry to Feldshuh's able and resillient Marla, ground Niki's sense of family, while Havana Rose Liu's Ruthie suggests the possibilty of future happiness. Harry was born (coincidentally?) the same day as Hoffman (8 August 1937), and Roher inserts photos of a younger Dustin at the piano to add street cred to Harry's status as a local jazz icon. In a brief, but pivotal turn as Ruthie's mentor/composer Marius Maissner, French leading man Jean Reno plays a bit against type and, together with Lior Raz's Uri, is part of an intriguing pair of "mentors" to Ruthie and Niki. Their stories add depth and history to the film's central action, even if their roles may play like more conventional plot-B devices. That last comment wasn't intended as a criticism: B-movie mechanics done well can be a joy to behold, and the supporting cast enhances and elevates Niki's conflict and the story's bittersweet conclusion.

In the past week, I have seen two fine, if very different, movies with themes involving music: John Carney's heartfelt Power Ballad and Daniel Roher's thrilling, provocative Tuner. Both films explore how the power of music impacts relationships, whether tearing people apart or bringing them together. As a character in each, music sets the emotional and intellectual tone for the action that follows, insinuating itself into how characters think, behave, and discover internal truths.

Power Ballad is more of a crowd pleaser than Tuner in terms of how it resolves some probing questions about the creative process and artistic ownership. Tuner is darker, more subtle and edgy. Both movies use traditional narrative structures to examine the unique ways in which music can influence everything from career choices to individual ethics, from professional rivalries to personal satisfaction and emotional fulfillment. Power Ballad grabbed my heart. Tuner intrigued my head.

And yet, I still can't help but wonder, in a summer movie season soon to be dominated by the usual onslaught of blockbuster adventures, super heroes and animated toys, why aren't there more movies that invite us to examine the immediate and universal issues of the mind and soul without excessive special effects and CGI-developed images? Isn't our mortal presence enough? It seems there is/should be significant beauty in stories about humanity left to pique our collective movie-going imagination. After all, out of anyone's personal chaos there is bound to be exquisite imperfection.

*******

Tuner is currently playing in limited release in theaters. It is rated "R" for language, some violence, drug use and brief nudity. It is also available for pre-order on Apple TV+ and Prime Video and should be on various streaming platforms later this summer.