“Tuner” Strikes a Chord
The easy summation of Daniel Roher’s Tuner is to call it a pitch-perfect crime drama, given the fact that it’s a movie about a piano tuner. Roher is primarily a documentarian and won the Best Documentary Feature Film at the 2023 Academy Awards for Navalny. That documentary followed Alexei Navalny, the Russian prisoner who was known for his staunch commitment to exposing corruption in the Russian government. Roher’s ability to go from Navalny to Tuner proves that he has a keen ear for stories rooted in reality, whether they’re fiction or not.
The piano has become less of an instrument and more of a statement piece in the homes of many people. It rarely gets played, but sits in the middle of a room emitting an air of wealth and importance. Never mind the fact that few hands have touched those keys. When the time comes, though, for someone to sit at the bench, the piano will need to be tuned. That’s where Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman) and Niki (Leo Woodall) come in. Harry’s been tuning pianos for decades and Niki is his apprentice. Niki has perfect pitch and used to be a piano player himself, but he has hyperacusis, a rare hearing disorder that causes the sounds of everyday life to be unbearably loud. Niki’s days of piano tuning are turned upside down when he discovers a talent for cracking safes.
A good crime flick is tightly wound, an ever-mounting series of events that feel as though they could cause the protagonist to snap at any moment. Niki is tightly wound even before he cracks his first safe. Part of the reason he got into the piano tuning business is implied to be because he used to be “something of a virtuoso.” With his hyperacusis, though, he lost the ability to pursue music as a career. He’s forced to be around the thing he loves so dearly, but physically cannot bear to play anymore. There’s such anguish in him, and a sadness that keeps him isolated from anyone who’s not Harry or Harry’s wife, Marla (Tovah Feldshuh). That is, until he meets Ruthie, an aspiring composer captivatingly played by Havana Rose Liu.
Courtesy of Black Bear
Tuner has the ability to turn safe-cracking into a compelling, sexy crime caper. In other heist movies, the cracker’s role is never the leading part. It’s immensely difficult to capture the inner workings of a safe in a way that’s captivating, given the fact that everything interesting is happening internally. He’s not cracking it by cutting into it or blasting through the reinforced metal. He’s thoughtfully, meticulously working his way through every single possibility on the dial. When Tuner pairs that with a jazzy little score by Will Bates, it’s cooking with gas. A later sequence sees Niki cracking a safe as Ruthie performs, creating a frantic scramble of a scene for both of them. It’s the moment of truth for Niki and Ruthie in ways they could not expect.
Tuner’s execution is classic. If a film grain was present and the few instances of cell phones were removed, this could have been made in the ’70s or earlier. Tuner is so in tune, no pun intended, with the legacy of accidental, desperate crime capers where it’s not about getting rich, but about stopping the bleeding. Niki only agrees to the safe-cracking offer because someone he loves very dearly is drowning in debt. When his back is against the wall, he does whatever is necessary to take care of those who cared for him. At the end of the day, Niki looks for family and connection. He may not say much when he’s seated around the dinner table with people like Harry and Marla, but it’s that sense of peace that Niki longs for beyond these two. Tuner is a quest for that tranquility in a world that is too loud, one that hits all the right notes — tuned not to perfection, but to the discordant reality that ultimately creates something special in its imperfections.
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