Sound of Metal: A deeply affecting portrait of a drummer whose life is upturned with the loss of his hearing
By Karen Gordon
Rating: A+
Sound of Metal, the dramatic feature film debut of writer/director Darius Marder, is an engrossing deeply affecting, meticulously crafted movie about a rock drummer and recovering addict who must come to terms with going deaf.
The film centers on Ruben (Riz Ahmed), a drummer in a thrash metal duo with his girlfriend, guitarist and singer Lou (Olivia Cooke). They’re on tour, travelling from town to town, gig to gig in their mobile home.
One day, Ruben’s hearing suddenly changes drastically. The conversations around him disappear into a blur of noise that sounds like he’s been suddenly plunged under water. It happens again during their performance. And by the next morning, Ruben can’t hear much of anything.
Ruben (Riz Ahmed)’s loss of hearing is an immersive experience for the audience in Sound of Metal.
He finds his way to a doctor who gives him the news that his hearing is deteriorating rapidly and tells him that he must immediately avoid loud noises to protect the hearing he has left.
Ruben wants to keep going. But Lou is visibly distressed, both by what’s happening and his reaction to it, and she won’t let him. Instead, she reaches out for help. As a result he gets a placement in a deaf community that also has a program for recovering addicts. This program is in a large, beautiful house in the countryside, run by Joe (Paul Raci), a recovering alcoholic who lost his hearing in the Vietnam war. He’s warm, but direct. The center has strict rules that mirror those of a rehab facility. Ruben resists, and to get him to stay, Lou leaves him.
There are many things going on in Sound of Metal, and many layers. But, it is foremost about Ruben’s journey.
As such the film rests on the performance of Ahmed. And what a performance. Marder spent five years searching for the right actor.
(Read about it HERE in my interview with Darius Marder, and check Bonnie Laufer’s video interviews with the Sound of Metal cast HERE).
His casting “find” pays off big time. Besides the physical demands of the role, (Ahmed learned how to play drums and became semi-fluent in sign language), he’s so emotionally present in what Ruben is going through that the performance is transformative.
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Ruben is a quiet guy, but also very present and responsive. As a recovering addict actively committed to his sobriety, he’s always listening, and thinking. You can see that aliveness, that striving for understanding and meaning in Ahmed’s performance, especially when he’s not talking. This is easily one of the best performances of the year.
The film is studded with terrific performances. Cooke is terrific as Lou, a small but pivotal role. Raci, a deaf actor, plays Joe, who in some ways becomes one of the film’s anchors. Joe’s role is to guide Ruben through an unasked-for transition. He’s not an in-your-face character, but the scenes between Joe and Ruben are quietly powerful.
Raci is not the only actor in the film from the deaf community (he’s a hearing actor raised by deaf parents). Marder cast mainly non-hearing actors in all the roles in the deaf community, which matters greatly in this film. There’s nothing artificial or overly drawn to show deafness as either something unusual or overly heroic. Joe tells Ruben that no one in this community sees deafness as something to be cured or fixed. Deaf people are people who happen to be deaf.
One of the most interesting aspects of Sound of Metal is the way Marder uses sound to convey what’s going on for Ruben. The film is closed-captioned from the beginning. That’s a direct nod to Marder’s grandmother who partly inspired the film, as well as a respectful nod to the community, but, it also is a guide for hearing people.
The film starts with a performance by Lou and Ruben that is at times distorted. Anyone who has been to a rock concert knows that at a certain point what you hear will sound distorted or blurred. But rather than letting us take that distortion for granted as normal rock concert sound, the closed captions draw our attention to the fact that for Ruben, the sound is already distorted.
When Ruben’s hearing starts to cut out, Marder cuts our sound out too at times, so we can hear what Ruben is hearing. In one scene, normal conversation disappears into something that sounds like we’re underwater. By putting us into Ruben’s head, we share the experience. There are a few scenes where Marder cuts back and forth to great effect from what’s Ruben hears and the actual sound in the room.
Marder has been meticulous about all of the aspects of this film, from the script (which he co-wrote with his brother Abraham Marder who also did the film score), to the ground-breaking sound design. He’s directed Sound of Metal with a light touch. The tone is straightforward and naturalistic. The camera focuses on intimate connections between the characters. This is a thoughtful, grounded, human scale film.
On the surface it’s a solid and and absorbing character study.
But thanks to Marder’s script and masterful direction, and Ahmed’s beautiful performance, there are increasingly deeper layers that take this movie to a deeper place.
Sound of Metal is easily one of the best films of the year.
Sound of Metal opens in theatres nationally, as permitted by COVID restrictions, and is available on the Digital TIFF Bell Lightbox (digital.tiff.net) starting November 20th. It debuts on digital platforms December 4.