Sound of Metal

There’s a large part of my life that I spent con­vinced I was bro­ken. Some­times I still won­der if that’s true, but thank­ful­ly it now doesn’t hap­pen as often, because I take med­ica­tion and my brain chem­istry has altered suf­fi­cient­ly so that the lows don’t seem quite as low, and the highs aren’t so high that I’m liable to do some­thing reckless.

There are vast stretch­es of time I can’t account for – lost weeks, months, years. I thought it was my mem­o­ry, but I think it’s more like­ly self-preser­va­tion. We hide the things that hurt us deep down inside. We do our best to avoid inter­ro­gat­ing them.

As this is a first look review, allow me the lux­u­ry of being a bit per­son­al: some­thing odd hap­pened to me while watch­ing Dar­ius Marder’s Sound of Met­al. I felt this strange sense of anx­i­ety and frus­tra­tion needling at me for almost all of its 140 minute run­time. I shot out at the moment the cred­its start­ed rolling. I texted a friend a glib remark about the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the only female char­ac­ter. And then, walk­ing back to my Airbnb, I thought about what I’d just seen some more, and burst into tears.

In Sound of Met­al, Riz Ahmed plays Ruben Stone, an addict who’s turned his life around. He’s a drum­mer in a met­al band with his girl­friend Lou (Olivia Cooke), and they live a nomadic life tour­ing the States in an Airstream trail­er. Their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al rela­tion­ship is jeop­ar­dised when Ruben dis­cov­ers he is los­ing his hear­ing, and Lou begins to wor­ry that he’s slid­ing towards a relapse. Togeth­er they seek a solu­tion, be it surgery to try and cor­rect his hear­ing loss, or a new sup­port sys­tem made up of peo­ple from the deaf com­mu­ni­ty who can help him come to terms with his situation.

There’s this ques­tion that hangs over the film, nag­ging at Ruben as he tries to make sense of his deaf­ness: if you could change this per­ceived dis­abil­i­ty, would you do it? There are peo­ple in Ruben’s life who try to help him see the pos­i­tives, invit­ing him into their com­mu­ni­ty and teach­ing him ​“how to be deaf”. But Ruben clings to his old life, eager to return to the way things were.

Both Ruben and Lou are vul­ner­a­ble crea­tures, utter­ly devot­ed to each oth­er as they are intro­duced. But sac­ri­fices have to be made, and both are changed by Ruben’s new cir­cum­stances. Heart­break seems all but inevitable. And it is, when you’re total­ly side­swiped by some­thing like that.

The per­for­mance Ahmed gives is arguably a career best: ten­der; frus­trat­ed and furi­ous; nev­er evok­ing any sort of pity. Ruben wants to live his life on his own terms, and fuck all the rest. And that means mak­ing mis­takes. But there’s also a sense he’s try­ing his best. At his side, Cooke’s char­ac­ter is per­haps a tad under­writ­ten but, as always, she is a joy to watch, and the chem­istry between her and Ahmed is unmis­tak­able. They’re joined by a cast com­prised large­ly from deaf actors, which feels like a land­mark moment in dis­abil­i­ty representation.

Just as impor­tant is the intri­cate and out­stand­ing sound design which, as well as sim­u­lat­ing the dis­ori­en­tat­ing expe­ri­ence of los­ing one’s hear­ing, high­lights the melody and noise that hear­ing-peo­ple often take for grant­ed: the whir of a blender; the slow drip of a cof­fee pot; even speak­ing on a mobile phone.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes a source of frus­tra­tion for Ruben as he is so used to express­ing him­self through music. How do you find any sense of iden­ti­ty when the source of it is snatched away with­out warn­ing? Reflect­ing Ruben’s new state of being, caught between the hear­ing and non-hear­ing worlds, large stretch­es of sign lan­guage go untrans­lat­ed. For the hear­ing audi­ence who don’t speak sign lan­guage, we’re as lost as he is.

I go back and forth on whether or not I’d take the offer, if it exist­ed. If I could take away the thing that’s caused me so much pain, would I still be who I am today? Ulti­mate­ly it feels like such a per­son­al ques­tion, such a deep, hard, unknow­able hypo­thet­i­cal. Sound of Met­al is con­fronting in a way that I couldn’t have pos­si­bil­i­ty expect­ed – a sym­pho­ny of sound and silence.

It’s dev­as­tat­ing and hope­ful in the same breath, anchored by Ahmed’s remark­able turn and the tech­ni­cal ambi­tion at its core. Of course it could be argued that it hits hard­est when you’ve expe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar sort of per­son­al nadir, but this doesn’t alter how accom­plished a debut it is for Marder, who nails it right out of the gate.

Sound of Met­al is avail­able on Ama­zon Prime Video from 12 April and in cin­e­mas from 17 May.