The Knick: Sounds Of Surgery (SPOILERS)

(SPOILERS) Soderbergh's unique use of period surgical sounds is another element of the brilliance behind Cinemax's HOT new series, The Knick.

ScreenShot / Via Cinemax's The Knick "Method and Madness"

Steven Soderberghs new series The Knick has already been heralded as being ground breaking, and Soderbergh's personal influence and style has already pinpointed as major factor in what sets this unique period drama apart from the rest. There has already been much discussion about Soderbergh's cinematography pulling this away from the realm of traditional period television/ drama, however, I found that it was Soderbergh's use of contemporary scoring, and diegetic sound that fully drew me into the personal narratives of The Knick, and the world of 1900.

Sound is in so many ways the unsung hero of film and television production, and is often a subtle clue of what sets quality production apart. The Knick takes this idea once step further, and takes into consideration a play our expectations with "medical drama."

Grey's Anatomy / Via wordpress.com

With a doubt, the contemporary incarnation of medical television has taken form as the hospital drama. Surgical scenes are accompanied with an even background of beeping representing the pulse of the patient. Often this steady beep is a driving force of an entire scene, the pacing of dialogue and urgency marked by a accelerated beeping heading towards flat-line. Go back and watch most surgical/ operating scenes, and you will notice that pacing and dialogue is directly linked to the background diegetic sound of medical instruments: defibrillator, heart monitor, etc.

ScreenShot / Via Cinemax's The Knick "Method and Madness"

Where the modern operating room is characterized by modernity and intimacy, by stark contrast is the audience introduced to the operating theater of "The Knick." The oddly contemporary, exciting, and dis-jarring scoring that lead Clive Owen into the operating room abruptly cut out to the sounds that fill the academic hall: the muttering of academics, the raw sounds of metal rolling on stone, and the release of steam from old-school sterilizers, and the patterns of breathing. There is no electricity, there are no advanced tools, and most importantly there is no BEEPING. Instead the beeping of heart monitors, are replaced the desperate turning of hand-crank, which manually allows that tubular tool above to drain blood from the incision. Our updates on the patient's pulse are not constantly being broadcast from a machine, but instead is carefully monitored by a nurse, who verbally gives the pulse during surgery. As audience members, the environmental sound of the whole surgery scene allows us to feel almost as blind as desperate as the doctors attempting the procedure.

While the idea of turn of the century operations is indeed, visually, incredibly gruesome, it is the established atmosphere of this operating room that makes it far more so. Soderbergh's use of extradiegetic-silence and accurate diegetic background effects immediately create an anxious fear of failure. As the scene is established and the first incision is made, the patience death seems imminent. This scene is gruesome purely because success was never a possibility, and we painfully have to watch and listen to this woman and child die.

Cinemax / Via Youtube.com

More than just sound can be talked about when discussing the artistry that goes into making this series, however specifically sound is what makes this show so guttural, gruesome, and hard hitting. Soderbergh discerned that an audience's expectation for sound correlates to their desire for hope. By challenging, in this opening surgical scene, the hope in this grim world of 1900, he has established on a epic scale the greatest antagonists of all time, doubt & death.

I am very excited to see where this season goes, and I look forward to seeing what tools and techniques Dr. Alginon and Thackeray can devise to stay the inevitable. Plus, I mean, its Clive Owen.