Sound Of Metal

Life is sweet. You're doing a job you adore. You're constantly on the move, spending each night in a different place and you're doing it all with something you're madly in love with. Things are going swimmingly and then in the blink of an eye is all goes to fuck. Something you've been ignoring for years bites you on the arse ensuring life will never ever be the same again. Do you lie down and die or do you adapt? Well?

Everyone knows the Oscars don't mean a thing anymore. People only watch them for the glamour and the glitz, an escape from ordinary life, a reason to stay up til the wee hours (if you ain't in the states) and ogle the rich and famous while you hoover pringles and feel awful about yourself. Next year though I'd bet good money on one winner. If Sound Of Metal doesn't win Best Sound Design I'll eat my hat. It's use of (and lack of) sound to help us experience what our lead character is experiencing is just mesmerising. We get thrown in at the deep end just like Ruben, the character played brilliantly by Riz Ahmed.

Ruben's the drummer for Blackgammon, the metal group he's one half of, the other being his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke). They live a nomadic life in an RV and travel across America playing gigs to loving audiences. The decibel level is taking it's toll on Ruben and one night it all comes to a head and a visit to a doctor informs him that his hearing has taken an unmerciful battering, one that it can't come back from. Former heroin user Ruben is distraught, he's on the verge of injecting again because his musical life is over but when his NA sponsor finds him a place in a rehab community made up of other deaf addicts he sees it as the only way he can stay going. It's tough though, Lou can't stay with him and he can't contact her. What happens next is up to him.

Sound Of Metal is one of many films this year that won't find their audience because of Covid-19 and it's a huge pity because it's really good. The loss of one of your five senses would of course be traumatic but SOM chooses not to depict it as a disability, more as a different way of living, something to adapt to and not to cope with and as such it avoids the pitfalls you get with this kind of film, the sentimentality, the soaring inspirational dialogue that ends up as cheesy instagram posts and it's all the better for it. No one here is a victim, not Lou who's traumatic childhood brought her to this place in her life, not Joe (Paul Raci) the man in charge of the deaf community nor Ruben. It's a refreshing change of angle.

Sound Of Metal works because it lets us build empathy with our lead, using sound to give us a minute taste of what's happening. That first initial dropout is terrifying, background chatter then nothing, all we have to go on is the sense of terror on his face, then garbled, muffled, buzzing, intermittent bouts of nothing at all, giving us no subtitles during the scenes where sign language first enters the story, forcing us to identify with Ruben, leaving us as lost as he is. It's effective film-making and a hell of a feature film debut for director Darius Marder. But as well as the film is made it's the performances that make or break a story like this and everyone lives up to the challenge.

Riz Ahmed's been doing mighty work for years but he's amazing here. Understandably angry but always likable, a performance that never once feels like acting, letting his expressions do all the work for him. Olivia Cooke who's missing for an hour in the middle of the story does well in a smaller part, conveying fear and heartbreak in glances and gestures, making the intimacy between Lou and Ruben feeling genuine. It's always good when a movie couple feels like a real couple. But it's a small moment from Paul Raci's Joe that will stay with you. A reaction to a decision made by Ruben. A quietly understated moment of upset that will get you right in the throat. Knowing Raci in real life grew up with deaf parents makes it feel even more profound. Stunning.

Sound Of Metal is streaming on Amazon Prime (US site) now. It's worth your time.