Sound of Metal

“Despite its oversimplification of Deaf culture, Sound of Metal generally constructs positive and nuanced characters.”

Title: Sound of Metal (2020)
Director: Darius Marder 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Darius Marder 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Abraham Marder 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Elaine 👩🏻🇺🇸

—SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 4/5

Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal opens with a live performance of Blackgammon, the punk-metal duo of drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) and singer Lou (Olivia Cooke). Lights flash, Lou’s voice wails and distorts, and the 35 mm film choice allows us to witness Ruben in all his gritty glory, sweat sparkling out of his skin. As the camera closes in on his peroxide hair and the “please kill me” tattooed on his bare chest, heavy drum beats prelude the immersive experience to follow.

Sound of Metal originally started as a heavy metal docufic over ten years ago before Marder shaped it into a narrative. Ruben, a recovering addict who turned to drumming and his girlfriend as his salvation, finds that all crumbling down when he loses his hearing. The film’s sound takes the front seat here, as Marder worked extensively with sound designer Nicolas Becker (127 Hours, Gravity) to bring us into Ruben’s head, allowing us to appreciate the minutiae of his daily routine such as the morning blender or the coffee dripping into a pot. When he looks out the window, or when the camera draws back to show him opening the door from his Airstream, we get what Marder calls a “point of hearing” shot. Namely, we hear all the little things that he hears—seagulls, cars passing by, his panting as he does push-ups inside. So when all of this is taken away and we’re left with the muffled thuds inside his head, the void is that much more effective and terrifying.

Marder viscerally captures the loss of not only sound, but of the control Ruben desires in his life. He reluctantly checks into a rehab center run by Joe (Paul Raci), a Deaf Vietnam vet who teaches people to live with their hearing loss, rather than try to repair it. He stops Ruben from mending a roof, telling him “You don’t need to fix anything here,” but Ruben is a character of action, unable to sit still during the quiet meditative exercises that Joe assigns. The initial concerns he voices center around how he can go back to who he was before his hearing loss. This parallel of control and sound, of Ruben’s journey to finding peace, acceptance, and the literal and figurative silence in his world, elevates the film beyond the often offensive stereotypes of characters “afflicted” with disability who must suffer through it.

With the sound such an integral part of the story, it would be easy for it to become a gimmick or to overshadow Ruben’s story. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen and a large part of that is due to Ahmed’s performance, which is affecting, but not sentimental. He fully inhabits the raw pain, conflict, and stultifying hope of Ruben without making us feel as if he’s manipulating our emotions. Sound of Metal is very much a movie from Ruben’s world, and the innovative sound production as well as Ahmed’s performance allow us to fully live in it.

Gender: 2.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

While there are a few actresses in the film other than Cooke, most notably Jenn (Chelsea Lee) as a fellow recovering addict who is also Deaf and Diane (Lauren Ridloff), a teacher at an elementary school for Deaf kids, they don’t interact with each other. We see Lou only in relation to Ruben, as she supports him as a girlfriend and convinces him to check into rehab. Even at the end of the movie when they have clearly diverged paths, Lou doesn’t contribute to their decision to split and it’s left up to Ruben to take the definitive step of letting her go. An argument can be made that she has her own journey as a character, which the film alludes to at various points. In the final act, the result of that growth manifests physically and in her relationship with her father. But since the movie solely follows Ruben’s perspective, we end up seeing very little of it on the screen.

Race: 4/5

Although Ahmed is British-Pakistani, Ruben’s identity isn’t defined by his race, nor does the narrative ever feel the need to address the color of his skin. Unfortunately, white people populate the other main roles. While Ahmed does meet and interact with several nuanced characters of color at the rehab center and at the school where he learns ASL, they mostly serve in background roles.

Bonus for Disability: +0.75

Sound of Metal explores the Deaf community and culture with more subtlety than is usually captured in film. Marder approaches this with not only the immersive sound design, but his intentional casting of actors who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing, or CODA (children of Deaf adults). All of the Deaf roles cast in the movie come from the culture, which Marder says “was never a negotiable aspect.”

It must be noted, however, that the main characters are all cast with Hearing actors. In Ahmed’s case, he does play a Hearing character who undergoes hearing loss, a story arc that helps mitigate some of the issues of casting. In addition, he spent seven months immersing himself in the Deaf community and learning ASL from language coach Jeremy Lee Stone, who also appears in the movie in a minor role and who worked behind the lens as a creative consultant.

The casting of Raci, on the other hand, was flagged by many members of the Deaf community for being a Hearing actor in a Deaf role. His portrayal does avoid some of the most egregious Hollywood pitfalls; as someone who grew up with Deaf parents and who calls American Sign Language (ASL) his “native language,” even front-manning a Black Sabbath tribute band that performs in ASL, his fluency removes some of the cognitive dissonance that might arise from seeing a Hearing actor attempt ASL, as seen with Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck (2017). That the character is Deaf though adds sting to the fact that it was given to a Hearing actor, despite this fluency.

Much of the criticism of the film from the Deaf community is not only due to the casting however, but also the hard binary approach it takes in having Ruben choose between either accepting his hearing loss and staying in the Deaf community, or rejoining the Hearing world by getting cochlear implants. Ren, a Deaf critic on Twitter, touts this either/or decision as an especially shortsighted error. Sara Novic, a Deaf rights activist and Deaf novelist agrees, saying:

The more disconcerting plot choice for me — mild spoiler warning — was Joe’s decision to banish Ruben from the program after he chooses to get cochlear implant surgery. While it’s true that we don’t view Deafness as a handicap, the harshness of the move rang false. The idea that one can either be culturally Deaf or have an implant is a position I’ve found to be touted far more frequently by medical professionals perpetuating misinformation about the detriments of bilingualism, rather than by the Deaf community.

However, despite its shortcomings in oversimplifying Deaf culture, the film generally constructs positive Deaf characters who aren’t defined solely by this facet of their identities. Novic says “that Sound of Metal refuses to romanticize deafness is perhaps its greatest strength … [It] is at its best when it’s pushing back against stereotypes, deaf-related and otherwise, and is certainly a step in the right direction.”

Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.25

Jenn is played by Chelsea Lee who, along with being a Deaf actor, identifies with she/her/they/them pronouns. Onscreen, her queerness is never hidden nor made a big deal of; in one scene, she nonchalantly shows off her new tattoo of a naked woman. Above all, Sound of Metal presents Jenn as a friend who helps Ruben acclimate to Deaf culture—a friend who thankfully never falls into tropeish “helper” territory as she clearly has her own life and floats in and out of Ruben’s with a sense of naturalism.

Mediaversity Grade: B 3.83/5

Sound of Metal is very much made for the “Hearing gaze.” And while there are moments that “build an earnest bridge between the Hearing and Deaf experience,” according to Julian Singleton who is a CODA, he also says that its “intentions are handicapped by its own ableist perspective.”

Sound of Metal is obviously flawed, but it does perhaps carry an unfair burden of being one of so few films about the Deaf/HoH community. Marder makes clear steps toward that bridge, but hasn’t achieved the quality of a film that goes beyond merely educating a Hearing audience.

As Singleton adds:

I genuinely look forward to Marder’s film starting a conversation within the Hearing community that’s much needed about shifting perspectives on Deafness from a mere absence of sound to a way of life that thrives wholly independent of that sense — just know that the Deaf and HOH community has been waiting for decades for Hearing people to come to the same conclusions.

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Grade: BLiApril 9, 2021Great for: Disability