MANILA, PHILIPPINES — We often take things like our five senses for granted. When one of those senses is taken away, however, a sudden revelation occurs and we suddenly appreciate that which we no longer have. That is the situation that heavy metal drummer Ruben Stone faces as his hearing progressively disappears in Sound of Metal.
Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed) is the drummer in the band Blackgammon with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke). They live out of an RV and tour from city to city while living a rock and roll lifestyle. Ruben begins to lose his hearing and, upon consulting with a doctor who conducts a series of tests on him, learns that his hearing will only get worse. Desperate for a solution, Ruben is told that cochlear implants are an option but they are very expensive.
Lou wants to end the tour so that Ruben can get better and because she’s concerned about his sobriety after being a recovering addict. She eventually convinces Ruben to give a shelter for deaf recovering addicts a try. The shelter is run by recovering alcoholic Joe (Paul Raci) who lost his hearing in the Vietnam War. Since Lou can’t stay with Ruben at the shelter, she leaves and they promise to stay in touch while he tries to learn how to live as a deaf person.
Initially bristling at the idea of having to learn American Sign Language (ASL) and is uncomfortable in social situations with other residents of the shelter, Ruben slowly begins to settle in. Even as Ruben becomes a part of the shelter though, he yearns to get the cochlear implants so that he can return to touring with Lou. Ruben’s opinions regarding his hearing loss come into conflict with what Joe has built for the community and Ruben eventually has to choose what path he will follow.
After Darius Marder’s paternal grandmother Dorothy became deaf after a bout with pancreatitis, it left a lasting impression on him, eventually leading him to work on a documentary film about a band whose drummer ruptures his eardrums and becomes deaf. That project was abandoned though, leaving Marder to instead craft a fictionalized account with his brother Abraham and Derek Cianfrance that became Sound of Metal. The result was an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the trio.
This story, as told through the perspective of Ruben, was shot in a way that left the audience looking for sound in several places, simulating what Ruben was going through. It’s no surprise then that Sound of Metal just won Academy Awards for Best Sound and Best Film Editing at the 93rd Academy Awards, as the film doesn’t just take away the audience’s “hearing,” it also replaces the audio with metal-like sounds when Ruben eventually gets his surgery done. They are small touches yet very effective in drawing us into the world that Ruben is suddenly thrust into when his hearing gradually disappears.
Beyond those effects though, the Marder brothers and Cianfrance present a story with a person whose entire life is based on the creation and performing with music then suddenly having that taken from him. Ruben’s insistence that his condition can be fixed, his discomfort when initially arriving at the shelter, his helplessness when Lou has to go on tour, and his loneliness when left alone to write his thoughts on paper all feel raw and sincere. Yet just when it seems like Ruben is making strides in the community, his insistence on the implants and his view that it will fix him place him in direct conflict with Joe’s philosophy.
One can’t help but feel for Ruben when he insists on selling most of his belongings to get the implants and reunite with Lou, but one must also wonder why Ruben doesn’t fully embrace the deaf community when he’s clearly made progress with them. When Ruben finally reunites with Lou and meets her father (Mathieu Amalric) in France of all places, he wants to pick things up where they left off, only for it to be painfully obvious that things have changed for Lou.
Sound of Metal presents deafness and loss of hearing in a way that has never been before on film, and the team of Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc, Carlos Cortés, and Phillip Bladh truly deserved their Oscar for that. Ahmed’s Ruben is not the conventional film protagonist by any means, but that does not take away from how amazing his performance was. Instead of just portraying someone perpetually angry who can’t accept his hearing loss, Ahmed instead shows someone who adjusts to people around him but remains focused on trying to fix what he believes to be broken about himself. There, perhaps, is the biggest tragedy in the story.
