Journey To Acceptance: Sound Of Metal

Sound Of Metal (2019) is one of those productions that subverted all my expectations at the moment I saw it complete, when I entered this film I expected to come across a drama in which music was widely involved as it was in the case of films like Whiplash and in its more "musical" form Lalaland, but Darius Harder's work takes a surprising step forward and proposes a reflective and accepting film with very well achieved performances from its main cast and a staging that is an excellent complement in each of its scenes, this is, for me, perhaps one of the essential titles of last year and that I had pending for a long time. It is a title that breathes freshness and that does not cut itself short when it comes to showing themes such as inclusion or the process that many people go through when they are at risk of losing their sense of hearing.

The film has a simple synopsis at the beginning, a drummer, played sublimely by one of the emerging actors of the moment, Riz Ahmed, suffers a collapse in his life as a musician when he discovers that he is progressively losing his hearing and that it is very possible that there is no cure or possibility of recovering it. The character of Ruben (the drummer) is the axis of the play by getting us from the beginning and with the help of the staging in each of the thoughts / concerns, we first get into a noisy world, with many dark tones and much abruptness to gradually move from the second act to the lighter tones and melodies almost simulating the journey of the character and is that in general from my point of view the play is an extensive walk through the noise and stellar to reach the silence and feel comfortable with it.

If the starting point of the work already arouses interest, after the first 15 minutes in which we had full Thrash Metal music and a focus on the drums and what seemed to be a film about the misadventures of a band, we have one of the first twists that I quite liked, we went from all the noise of Metal bands and drums to a much more leisurely, peaceful, and meditative environment. It is in the calm that the drama begins for the thunderous music of our drummer Ruben. After being diagnosed with a deafness that becomes more progressive with each gig he plays, his girlfriend Lou (played by one of my favorites, Olivia Cooke) decides to put the band on hiatus and motivates Ruben to take a break in a community far away, both from the noise in the metaphorical and literal sense, as it is inhabited entirely by deaf people, mostly children and teenagers led by Joe (played by the ever-accurate Paul Raci).

Two comments I have about the film from the first 45 minutes. The music is spectacularly used to convey all the sense of hatred and helplessness of our protagonists as well as to relax the atmosphere and give us hints of their acceptance of the possibility of indefinite deafness. The director from the beginning plays with the elements such as the camera or the music to get us into the mind of the protagonist and the performance of Riz Hamed only enhances every aspect of the film and complements each shot in a great way.

The second thing is that I have to emphasize that from beginning to end the performance of Riz Hamed is superb, I had already seen him as the right hand of a sociopath in Nightcrawler or as a villain underdeveloped in Venom but here it is noted by the expressions so human and almost improvised in every scene he occupies, also give credit to the director in this as he let Amed rewrite at will the lines of the character of Ruben to be more in line with his personality.

Anyway, this film can be defined very briefly (and perhaps even superb on my part) as a journey from noise, anger and rage to understanding, acceptance and forgiveness, many parts of the film receive a sob from me for the very human and down to earth presentation of the characters, the staging although it follows the course of independent films from USA I think it varies in each shot to bring freshness and a little air to the film. I think what I liked most about this film is how it treats its story, it constantly challenges the prejudices we have of the characters and gives a personal and inspiring message in a touching way. An excellent film that I enjoyed and will surely revisit.