"Sound of Metal" powerfully intimate and an impressively controlled showcase for Riz Ahmed

Sound of Metal (2020)

The most fascinating component of a film can be an entry into another person’s walk of life completely different from our own. Writer-director Darius Marder’s “Sound of Metal” is specific yet universal with the idea that we all appreciate something more when we no longer have it, and it’s knockout filmmaking, to boot. Intimate, alive, and authentically gritty without coming off melodramatic, the film, co-written by Marder and brother Abraham Marder, offers no pat solutions and never sands down the edges for an Afterschool Special. “Sound of Metal” is not only this but excels as an impressively controlled showcase for actor Riz Ahmed.

Ruben (Ahmed) and Lou (Olivia Cooke) are wandering lovers and punk metal musicians living on the road and finding gigs where they can. In their two-person band Blackgammon, Ruben is on the drums and Lou performs the vocals while thrashing on the guitar. Prior to one of their gigs, Ruben suddenly stops being able to hear. When he sees a doctor and hears his expensive options, like a procedure for cochlear implants pricing around $40-80,000, he is told that his exposure to noise needs to be eliminated or else his hearing will worsen, but Ruben feels obligated to the tour he and Lou booked. Though Ruben has been clean for four years, his sudden hearing loss throws him into a state of anxiety that reaching out for the familiar could be inevitable. Lou urges him to stay with a community run by Joe (Paul Raci), who manages a program for deaf addicts, even if Ruben has to do it alone without her. 

“Sound of Metal” is a story of coping and self-recovery, but it’s not about deafness being a disability or something that needs to be fixed. Ruben does not accept Joe’s strong philosophy—deafness just becomes one’s new way of life with American Sign Language trumping implants—right away, but he learns to adapt and, like living a life of sobriety, it takes time. At the onset of Ruben’s ability to hear dropping out, Darius Marder brings the audience into Ruben’s muffled headspace, allowing us to feel his panic and disorientation with a stunningly visceral sound design (and the non-optional closed captioning is key). Once Ruben does go through with the implants, the metallic sound of everything around him is made intentionally unpleasant. 

Riz Ahmed (2018’s “Venom”) is incredible, embodying Ruben as if not to be acting. His sinewy body covered in tattoos suggesting a long life already lived, this is a performance that’s internal yet hardly muted, and volatile but never showy. Ruben can be a belligerent character, and understandably so once he feels his musical livelihood has been stolen from him, but there is a softness there that becomes heartbreaking. Paul Raci (in real life, a member of a sign-language heavy metal band) is wonderful as experienced counselor Joe, who has mostly lost his hearing in Vietnam; Joe stands strongly by his beliefs and patiently hopes Ruben will see it his way with tough love. Olivia Cooke’s work should not go unmentioned as Lou, Ruben’s main anchor; there’s subtlety in how her literal scars are observed but never explicitly mentioned, and while it might sound simplistic, Lou’s progress in her life away from Ruben can be conveyed in the color of her eyebrows. 

Ruben’s hearing may never be the same again, but “Sound of Metal” never turns his status quo into a bleak endgame. The passing of time is not always clear, which might have made the impact of Ruben and Lou reconnecting even more palpable, but the story never takes the most obvious route, like Ruben volunteering at a school for deaf children with a teacher (Lauren Ridloff), who’s deaf herself. In ways that are hopeful but never preachy or mawkish, “Sound of Metal” is ultimately life-affirming, while affirming that life is never without the tough stuff. When the film ends—and it has one of those perfect endings that subtly takes one’s breath away—Ruben is still adjusting to his new beginning when he learns that silence really can be golden, and that impact is echoing. 

Grade: B +

Amazon Studios released “Sound of Metal” (120 min.) in select theaters on November 20, 2020, followed by a streaming release on Prime Video on December 4, 2020.