Review: Sound of Metal (2021)
Directed by Darius Marder; screenplay by Darius Marder and Abraham Marder, story by Derek Cianfrance; starring Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke and Paul Raci.
Finally got to see this today, after months of anticipation.
Sound of Metal centres its conflict on the noisiness of life and our inability to just sit and take it all in and not just this, but the growth that can arise from huge, identity-cracking loss.
Ruben (Riz Ahmed), the drummer and one half of the fictional metal duo Blackgammon (the other half being his girlfriend and vocalist, Lou, played by Olivia Cooke) starts to lose his hearing and as he traverses the consequences that brings with it, he must confront a deeper sense of frenetic mania within himself and his life. As Ruben's hearing loss worsens, his past as an addict threatens to resurface and swallow him whole.
The film was originally a Derek Cianfrance project but ended up in the hands of Darius Marder as director and co-writer, alongside his brother, Abraham. Cianfrance and Marder had worked together previously on The Place Beyond the Pines, and this film feels very similar in its sensibilities, with a number of large improvements.
The two films really share a sense of grit, not just in their stories but in the physicality of the way they're committed to film. Where this was a seeming stylistic choice in Pines, though, here it really feels like a more conscious decision to tie Ruben's internal strife and eventual discovery to the way we quite literally view his world.
What really elevates the film (aside from Riz Ahmed's central performance, which I'll get to soon) is this dedication to its form fitting its function, and that isn't to say it's utilitarian, it's entirely artful. The sound design, oh my the sound design. The ringing of Ruben's slowly degrading hearing suffocates in all the right ways, the digital noisiness of a hearing aid is utterly terrifying, in an existential sense. It was bound to happen, it was necessary for a film such as this to have stellar sound editing but it's one thing for it to be necessary and another to simply witness it and hear it. Subtitles are also a large part of the film's arsenal here and the distinct lack in critical moments, such as Ruben's struggle to hear the love of his life and his sole supporter in the world, just bring the crushing reality of the situation home.
The biggest takeaway from the Sound of Metal is really, though, Riz Ahmed's spectacular performance. Ahmed embodies the role with a fierce physicality and the energy he brings to it really sells the boiling, writhing turmoil going on beneath Ruben's inked, drumming-toned body. In so many moments, Ahmed's acting seems to get turned up to 11 and sells with an urgent authenticity what could have been sold - to nowhere near the same effect - in a really hamfisted, blubbering turn for some Hollywood hopeful.
Further, from some research I've done, Ahmed himself appears to have really brought a great deal to the film with his commitment to the ASL community in his own training. Ahmed describes the kind of repression spoken language seems to bring in comparison to the required embodiment of sign language and it's hard not to see how this factors into the success of Sound of Metal.
Watched on 13 April 2021