Movie Reviewed: Sound of Metal
Director: Darius Marder
Date Reviewed: 13 March 2021
jamesintexas rating: ***1/2
Streaming on Amazon.com
On the anniversary of the lockdown beginning here in Houston, I finished Darius Marder's Sound of Metal which features a phenomenal performance by Riz Ahmed, who will hopefully be nominated for his first Best Actor Oscar, as Ruben, the drummer of a heavy metal duo that tours the US in a vintage Gulfstream RV playing small, passionate gigs with his singer girlfriend Lou, played by Olivia Cooke. Ruben finds himself increasingly suffering from hearing loss, depicted painfully through Marder's thoughtful sound design until one night at a gig, it all goes away. Ruben's unpacking of his newfound hearing loss and what it means to his identity as a drummer, as bandmate, as a partner to Lou is unnerving and raw. There are moment of grief and terror here where Ahmed uses his face and whole body to manifest his character's devastation and fear in ways that truly took my breath away. His is a marvelous performance; the word Brando-esque comes to mind in my limited capacity as a filmgoer, but it seems completely appropriate.
Ruben must contend with joining a deaf community, learning sign language, and renegotiating who he is. Joe, played by Paul Raci, runs a home of sorts for the deaf in a rural environ where Ruben must surrender his car keys and cell phone. Joe's own story as a Vietnam Veteran who stepped on a landmine resulting in hearing loss intersects with his identity as an alcoholic, and Sound of Metal threads the line in talking about multiple avenues of pain many characters encounter at once which feels real to me and encompassing of how life actually works. Often, being an addict can also be combined with one or more additional challenges, but Sound of Metal never seems like an issues movie. Marder keeps us firmly in the corner of Ruben, right or wrong, as he negotiates his way through his new life, forging small connections on the playground with a young boy, leading a drum circle, considering steps that may lead him back to Lou but could also isolate him further.
The third act of the film is jarring and still echoing around in my head. The intentional sound design provides an aesthetic component to Ruben's journey. Marder resists the urge to turn Lou into a stereotype or anything less than a fully-formed flawed character, and a late appearance by Lou's dad played by the great Mathieu Amalric is completely captivating in its capturing of his own flawed humanity. Marder has constructed a film where two people talking to each other in a bed can be the height of both poetry and drama. I was completely mesmerized by this film, its intricacies and its pain, and I sincerely hope you seek it out. Its last minutes will stay with me for a long time.
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