“Yo. If I disappear, like, who cares? Nobody cares, man. Seriously.”
When beginning to watch The Sound of Metal I had no idea what the film would be about. Afterwards I was pleasantly surprised by a film that I initially thought would be quite literally about the sound of metal music.
Ruben Stone, played by Riz Ahmed, is on tour with his girlfriend and bandmate Lou (played by Olivia Cooke), as he loses his hearing during a concert. After trying to regain it himself and seeking medical advice he comes clean to Lou that his hearing has gone and that's the reason why he wasn't 100 percent on the drums.
This leads us into a film that shows us a man that had nothing in his life and found everything he believes himself to be in being a musician. Ruben reluctantly sets out to stay at a deaf community, where they believe being deaf is not a handicap, with a goal to teach Ruben how to cope with his missing sense.
As Ruben takes the very first steps to accepting his deafness we see him struggle with who he was in his past. He realises without music he has nothing to distract him from the feeling of being a low-life addict.
Darius Marder does a superb job orchestrating the despair, frustration and anger from Ahmed's character on to the audience. Riz Ahmed's performance is very convincing, he perfectly depicts how it may feel to lose your hearing.
The film makes it easy for the viewer to sympathise with the character and actor throughout his journey of self-acceptance and his learning how to live in a world that has changed so drastically for himself, however seemingly staying the same for everyone else.
The Sound of Metal is a film that will place you in the protagonist's shoes as he learns how to live and understand the loss of something that we all take for granted.
"Serenity is no longer wishing you had a different past."
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