Riz Ahmed bangs the drums in The Sound of Met­al trailer

With a much pal­tri­er slate of movies to choose from this year, it would appear that awards selec­tion com­mit­tees will even­tu­al­ly have to for­mu­late a line­up of nom­i­nees a bit far­ther from a cin­e­ma main­stream all but nonex­is­tent in its cur­rent form. In light of this, Riz Ahmed may be in luck, as he deliv­ers just the sort of stand­out indie per­for­mance that might have gone over­looked in a more crowd­ed 2020.

He stars in The Sound of Met­al, the direc­to­r­i­al debut from The Place Beyond the Pines writer Dar­ius Marder, as a speed-rock drum­mer los­ing his all-impor­tant sense of hear­ing at a rapid pace. In the new trail­er released just yes­ter­day, Ahmed shows his skill on the skins, pul­ver­iz­ing his set in a dis­play of self-destruc­tion and depres­sur­ized rage.

The emo­tion­al core of the film focus­es more close­ly on his efforts to heal him­self inside and out, as his char­ac­ter Ruben goes to a unique reha­bil­i­ta­tion facil­i­ty where the deaf pro­vide one anoth­er with coun­sel and com­mu­ni­ty. He finds solace there, but fears that build­ing a new life may mean dis­tanc­ing him­self from his ded­i­cat­ed girl­friend and band­mate, Lou (a bleached-eye­browed Olivia Cooke).

Not seen in the trail­er is her father (Math­ieu Amal­ric), who fig­ures sig­nif­i­cant­ly into the final hour of this lengthy epic of inti­ma­cy, which takes Ruben from his silent haven to a per­son­al reck­on­ing in Paris.

The film made quite a splash in its ini­tial pre­mière last year at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, where Ahmed earned raves for his per­for­mance of reined-in anger, and where one mem­ber of the audi­ence had to be rushed to the hos­pi­tal after faint­ing. (Whether that was due to the inten­si­ty of the audio’s high and low fre­quen­cies or a pre­ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tion was nev­er quite settled.)

Those present have spent the last year bang­ing the drum in the more idiomat­ic sense, talk­ing up a stripped-down char­ac­ter piece as they wait­ed for the film to get a new release date after the first was scut­tled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

One oth­er thing to note: the trail­er has built-in sub­ti­tles, a nod to Marder’s com­mit­ment to depic­tion and gen­er­al­ly doing right by the deaf com­mu­ni­ty in the film. Many of the oth­er guests at Ruben’s ther­a­py group were por­trayed by non­pro­fes­sion­al actors, lend­ing verisimil­i­tude to the film with their intu­itive under­stand­ing of the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing with­out sound.

While the script fol­lows Ruben, it also paints a pic­ture of agency with­in dis­abil­i­ty, as the deaf cast mem­bers demon­strate their capac­i­ty to do and be what­ev­er they like.

Sound of Met­al comes to select cin­e­mas in the US on 20 Novem­ber, then to Ama­zon Prime on 4 December.