2021 Oscars Review: Sound of Metal
Joe (Paul Raci, left) and Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed, right). Raci is nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Ahmed is nominated for Best Actor at the 93rd Academy Awards.
We begin the second half of our eight Best Picture nominee reviews with an intimate character-driven drama. Starring Riz Ahmed and directed by Darius Marder, Sound of Metal is nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Film Editing, and Sound. It chronicles a heavy metal drummer and recovering addict as he copes with the loss of his hearing. It is available on Amazon Prime Video.
“I wonder, all these mornings you’ve been sitting in my study, sitting, have you had any moments of stillness? Because you’re right, Ruben. The world does keep moving, and it can be a damn cruel place. But for me, those moments of stillness, that place, that’s the kingdom of God.”
It seems like every year there’s a minimalist, small-budgeted movie that heavily focuses on one or two characters that ends up being one of my favorites of the year. In 2019, it was The Lighthouse and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. In 2018, it was First Reformed. In 2017, it was The Florida Project, and before that it was Moonlight. This year, it’s Sound of Metal.
Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is the drummer in a heavy metal band amusingly but somewhat realistically called Blackgammon. Metal bands aren’t exactly known for having the most clever names - Helloween, Eyehategod, Five Finger Death Punch, to name a few - but it’s clear from the opening scene that Ruben and his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke), the band’s vocalist and guitarist, take their craft seriously and personally. This physically manifests when Ruben experiences a moment of zen during the show where he focuses inward and breathes over distorted amplifiers allowing the final guitar note to ring. And despite the small venues, meager merchandise stands, and relatively little money, Blackgammon appears to have some level of relevance in the metal world, as indicated by the magazine covers hanging up in the couple’s RV which include a cover story in Decibel magazine. Not only is Lou Ruben’s girlfriend and bandmate, but it’s heavily implied that she helped him through an addiction to “everything” - particularly heroin - and that he’d been clean for four years at the start of the film.
When Ruben experiences a shrill screech in his ears during a run-of-the-mill conversation about the upcoming show, he tries to shake off any worry. But the viewer knows where that tinnitus is leading us. From that point onward, the film becomes less about the world of heavy metal and more about another tight-knit community, a Deaf group of recovering addicts led by Joe (Paul Raci). When Lou brings a frustrated and apprehensive Ruben to meet Joe for the first time, Ruben is reticent about entering Joe’s community and instead more concerned with raising money for cochlear implant surgery to regain his hearing. The rest of the movie focuses on Ruben’s quest, with the help of Joe and the rest of the members of the shelter, to cope with a major change in his day-to-day life while not relapsing into his addiction.
As an outsider to the Deaf community, I obviously can’t weigh in on the accuracy of the experience by any means, but it felt as if the performances of Ahmed, Raci, and the ensemble of Deaf actors were authentic and effectively addressed the social stigmas regarding what it means to be both deaf, in the sense of managing a hearing loss condition, and Deaf, as in a member of Deaf culture. The film does an excellent job of distinguishing those two concepts and explaining how the condition and the community go hand-in-hand but are not the same. At the same time, it doesn’t glamorize deafness like Hollywood has with various other issues like mental illness and suicide - the film simply treats deafness as a condition that exists and shows that it’s neither a disability nor a superpower. Normal people are deaf, and Deaf people are normal.
As Joe puts it early on, “everybody here shares in the belief that being deaf is not a handicap. Not something to fix. It's pretty important around here. All these kids...all of us, need to be reminded of it every day.” That preexisting stigma is why it’s so compelling to see the roles reversed; Ruben in the role of outsider and the Deaf community as the insider. There’s a scene soon into Ruben’s stay where he is at a group dinner and everyone is conversing in American Sign Language (ASL), joking and laughing while they eat. Since Ruben doesn’t understand ASL, the filmmakers elected not to provide subtitles, and the scene is that much more effective for it. Though Ruben (and any hearing viewer without ASL ability) can’t understand the words being communicated, the scene is one of the most successful at simultaneously displaying how normal it is to be Deaf and conveying the influence that the mostly Deaf cast had on director Darius Marder’s product.
Throughout the film, Ruben’s journeys to find the same mental quiet and stillness he seemed to have as a drummer and chasing his dream while conquering his addiction. Despite his deafness, Ruben’s mind is as loud and chaotic as ever. It’s the sort of premise that sounds a bit hokey in theory - metal drummer loses his hearing - but Ahmed’s attention to detail and commitment to the role, combined with the care taken by Marder to represent the Deaf community accurately and sensitively, drive the film to the heights it achieves.
Marder recognized the importance of individualizing each person in this particular Deaf community. For example, Diane (Lauren Ridloff), a teacher, welcomes Ruben into her ASL class and facilitates a connection with her Deaf students. Later on, Ruben improves enough to teach those children beginner drumming. Another notable character is Jenn (Chelsea Lee), who befriends Ruben and allows him to fill the role of her brother, who it’s implied alienated her based on some combination of her deafness, sexual orientation, and addiction. In her brief time onscreen, Jenn expresses the complexities of a unique, fleshed-out person, especially shown through her hesitancy to help Ruben sell his music equipment for surgery and her recognition that he is still a hearing person at heart. Her past has led her to distrust hearing people who choose not to embrace the community. Although the film never explicitly explores her trauma, Lee’s performance evokes a real, intersectional human being which has rarely, if ever, been seen to this degree in a major film.
To his credit, Marder “repeatedly turned down meetings with A-list actors who wanted to audition for the role” of Joe, instead opting for former Navy officer and decades-long character actor Paul Raci. While Raci is not deaf himself, he was a hearing son to deaf parents and is ASL-fluent. He takes the “definitely” autobiographical role that comprises the emotional rock at the heart of the story and provides the film legitimacy among both the Deaf community and those suffering from addiction. It’s awesome to see a character actor like Raci, typically confined to one-off appearances in TV shows like Parks and Recreation, Baywatch, and Baskets, bare his soul on the big screen and receive so many accolades for his portrayal of a severely underrepresented group in media.
As for the lead actor, Ahmed channels some of his best work such as Nightcrawler and The Night Of in creating a character who ranges from angry to desperate to loving to determined in an unfamiliar world. He does so using demonstrative eye work and facial expressions in addition to his voice. Ruben’s demeanor tells more about his character to the viewer than Ruben recognizes himself. There’s a scene later on in the film where Ruben asks Joe for money. Ruben’s method of doing so, Joe remarks, makes him “look and sound like an addict.” But he’s not talking about using heroin or any drug. Joe’s saying that Ruben is addicted to his view of normalcy - being a hearing person by any means necessary (including cochlear implant surgery) - and a crippling fear of the unknown. It’s a testament to Ahmed’s performance that the viewer picks up on this before Joe even says it. His work is some of the best of the year.
According to a profile in the New York Times, every day for eight months, Ahmed spent “two hours learning American Sign Language, two hours on drum practice, two hours sculpting his body with a personal trainer, and the rest of the day with his acting coach.” And you can tell. He knocked it out of the park. Lost in much of the rightful focus on the Deaf community surrounding this film is the fact that for his performance, Ahmed became the first Muslim actor ever, in almost a century, to receive a nomination for Best Actor at the Academy Awards (though funnily enough, his cousins weren’t impressed). As Ahmed put it:
We should stretch culture so that it’s big enough and wide enough and expansive enough so that there’s space for all of us to find ourselves in it, to feel that we belong and that we’re included, and that we matter. These changes aren’t just something that’s good politically or socially. It’s something which allows stories and storytelling to get back to its original intention, which is to embrace all of us.
He continued, this time regarding “disabled” actors, in another interview:
“We are missing out on so much talent, so many connections, so much friendship, such a richness of perspective by marginalizing differently abled people in our society. These people are not hugely talented despite their so-called disability, but because of their lived experience. Their lived experience has given them a specificity of perspective, and of strength. We're missing out. It's our collective loss.”
And in the end, it’s that type of representation that creates the emotional engine that drives the film. That’s no surprise - after all, representation breeds authenticity and great art. A film about a person or group - created or influenced by people within that same group - almost categorically feels more real than one that is not. Compare the way that Get Out tackles racism as opposed to Green Book, or the way that The Peanut Butter Falcon explores an intellectual disability versus how Radio does it, or how Portrait of a Lady on Fire examines a same-sex relationship as opposed to Bohemian Rhapsody. Representation breeds authenticity.
The sound editing also sets Sound of Metal apart. A film seriously tackling what it means to be deaf (and Deaf), in order to succeed, sound designer Nicolas Becker (Gravity, Arrival) had to effectively portray the contrast of sound from inside and outside Ruben’s perspective. Just like hearing loss occurs in real life, the film shows Ruben first experiencing tinnitus, then losing his ability to hear higher frequencies, leaving only lower, muffled tones, until he finally cannot hear anything. The creative soundscape does not end there, however. There is a scene where Ruben and one of the children in his ASL class sit on either end of a metal playground slide and drum “We Will Rock You” by Queen together, creating a vibratory effect resulting in an alternative experience of sound. The sound team also focused on smaller, subtler noises like opening of jars, cloth rubbing against chairs, and the creaks of doors early on contrasted with loud drumming and that of a whirring blender in order to show the contrast of their absence later in the movie. Not only did the team not use a “sound library” as most films do, Becker actually built “a small microphone that you can put in your mouth without it being broken. We were able to really recall all the inner sounds from Riz: racing heartbeats, blood pressure, tendons’ moves, muscle and bone movements” in order to immerse the viewer in Ruben’s experience. And later in the film, he uses distortion and volume in his depiction of the cochlear implant’s effect on sound. It’s a complete filmmaking marvel to be able to tell an entire story through sound the way this movie does. Unsurprisingly, it was deservingly nominated for Best Sound and Best Film Editing at the Oscars.
I think my one main criticism is that Lou’s character could have been better cast. Erin said to me that if Anya Taylor-Joy was in the same role, it would have been more effective and possibly nominated. I agree to an extent, but I think Olivia Cooke was fine. Her arc wasn’t interesting to me, though it was cool to see her life before Ruben entered the program and the different place she was in afterward. Her performance worked to help Ruben self-actualize and complete his character development, even if I’d have preferred Taylor-Joy or Kaitlyn Dever or Zendaya in the role. Dakota Johnson was the first actress who signed on to play Lou, and I think she’d have been good too.
In sum, I loved Sound of Metal. Bolstered by top-notch performances from an absolute star in Riz Ahmed as well as Paul Raci, the film was grounded upon respect and care for the Deaf community. Involving Deaf actors and more importantly, listening to them, resulted in a supremely affecting, authentic, and universal film that everyone should watch. It’s my favorite movie I’ve watched for awards season so far, and I can’t recommend it enough.
Rating: 9/10
For further information on the film, I can’t recommend the articles I linked enough, and here’s a fascinating video explaining the thematic and technical ideas behind the film’s sound design.