Originally published January 2021
Sound of Metal, directed by Darius Marder and starring Riz Ahmed, features original subject matter and some memorable acting, but it’s too sloppy for my taste. I see its appeal, as there are certainly some powerful moments in this film. Those tend to be the scenes including both Ahmed’s character, a heavy metal drummer who quickly loses his hearing, and his concerned girlfriend, played by Olivia Cooke. But these moments arise too infrequently from behind a flawed script that tries to tell two stories, neither of which are completely fleshed out and neither of which connects especially strongly to the other.
Within minutes of Sound of Metal, Ruben Stone (Ahmed) is deaf. But before the halfway point of the movie, he has already found purpose and tranquility among a shelter for deaf individuals, having learned sign language and having started teaching deaf children music and other joys. It feels a bit rushed. This could have been the full movie, but for some reason Marder doesn’t want it to be, and instead Stone leaves the shelter on his own and gets surgery for a cochlear implant, disregarding all of what it seemed that he had learned and essentially restarting the movie.
In fairness to Ruben, the primary philosophy of the shelter—that deafness isn’t a handicap—can’t really be applied to his case: it may not be a handicap in general, but to a professional drummer, it is. Shelter leader Joe (Paul Raci) accuses Stone of acting like an addict, but isn’t this a bit unfair? An addict to…his career as a musician? His livelihood?
Stone rejoins his girlfriend Lou (Cooke) in Paris, and an excellent scene ensues during which they mutually recognize that given their assorted issues—Lou has ongoing mental health struggles—returning to tour won’t be possible, even though they’ve already essentially saved one another’s lives with their earlier mutual support. But the completion of this interesting arc, which, again, could have comprised the entire film, is unfortunately drowned out by a different problem that comes to dominate this portion: Ruben doesn’t like his cochlear implant. And indeed, we get to hear what he hears, and it’s not pleasant. So he decides not to use it anymore.
This is meant to be a triumph: Ruben has finally come to heed the advice of Joe and others that deafness is no handicap at all. But this isn’t quite right, because the problem wasn’t the return of hearing per se; it was that Stone’s implant sounded terrible. Well, anyway, this opens the door for Stone to return to the shelter: will he reconcile with Joe? Maybe express feelings for noticeably attractive deaf teacher Diane (Lauren Ridloff), and start a new relationship?
Whoops, we’re out of time.
Poorly paced and freewheeling as it is, this script is just too messy, and it should be said that some technical aspects of this movie are messy as well. For example, Stone initially has to use a speech-to-type translator, and it somehow knows how to spell names like Lou, and to capitalize their first letters. In one scene, it even reflects sarcastic quotation marks when Joe expresses disdain. We must find this state-of-the-art AI being used in rural Missouri, and bring it back to the rest of the world!
Visually, these scenes don’t quite work either, with the back and forth camera angles creating high suspicion that Ahmed and Raci aren’t actually in the same room. They also clash with the primarily handheld camerawork that characterizes other scenes at the shelter. There just isn’t sufficient attention to detail throughout, and this is subject matter that demands extraordinary attention to detail.
On some level, I suppose Sound of Metal is supposed to be jarring and unorthodox, like heavy metal. But it feels like the work of multiple hands trying to develop various unrelated themes: the difficulty of coping with a new disability, the idea that deafness is in fact not a disability, the power of love to weather difficult times, the power of community to weather difficult times in the absence of a loved one (who could serve as a distraction), the constant battle of overcoming addiction, and last but not least, that cochlear implants don’t sound good. As any band would know, everyone has to be on the same page, and this movie never quite gels.
–Jim Andersen
For other movie reviews, see my review of Beckett.