Sound of Metal Review: Everything you should know!
The first feature of American director Darius Marder, The Sound of Metal, now running on Amazon Prime, has been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
More importantly, the film’s star Riz Ahmed is in the race for Best Actor, the first time a Muslim has been awarded in this category.
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Sound of Metal Summary: What the movie is about?
In the sound of metal, Riz Ahmed plays Reuben Stone, a heavy metal drummer who loses hearing. The film opens with Reuben in the middle of a performance, his muscular bare chest inscribed with the words “Please Kill Me”, among other things.
His girlfriend of four years, Lou (Olivia Cook), is the singer of the two. When they wake up in their RVs the next morning, we see that Lu’s body also has traces of the past. His wrists have been deformed by cuts, such as suicide tattoos inscribed on his body in code language.
Yet, unlike their physical appearances, the two look at peace with each other strangely. His drive from one interstate gig to another is full of light talks and jokes and naps as if he were in his Indie Road film.
The RV is their small world within a world: a cocoon of healing designed to quell the noise of history that hurt them. Their relationship is young and sensory, full of sight and smell and touch and plenty of sounds.
Sound of Metal Recap: What happened in the movie?
One fine morning, the metal drummer finds that all he can hear is distorted noise, a scary scenario for a musician. The doctor tells him that the only way to regain his hearing ability is through a transplant. But, it will cost a bomb, and insurance does not cover it.
Therefore, Lu feels that Reuben should spend some time at the rehabilitation center, where he can learn sign language. This is only until there is sufficient funding for the transplant.
Ahmad is excellent as a man who, by being defeated by a formidable physical obstacle, forcefully brings out frustration, distress, frustration, and a strangulation feeling of defeat.
His girlfriend is extremely supportive, but Reuben is a wounded animal, standing at the crossroads and with no clue as to which side he should go. Ahmed is subtle, restrained and controlled – and these make his performance top grade.
It would be terrible for any of us, but for Reuben who plays the drums professionally, this is the end of his chosen way of life – the music he creates, and the constant company of the love of his life, Fellow band member Lou (Cook).
Sound of Metal Review: Great Performance by Riz Ahmed!
Reuben goes blind when, without warning, the music turns into a monotonous whistle one night, sending him on a desperate search for a doctor.
Ahmed’s face symbolizes the horrors of the situation as he realizes that his hearing is almost gone, leaving him unable to understand most of the words around him.
Medical professionals do not waste time on why this happened – noisecore drumming may occur, an autoimmune condition – because the bottom line is the same: it is not coming back, and it has to preserve everything it needs to hear. need to.
Instead, he follows his instinct back to the stage, until he almost destroys him. Ahmed’s inner, soulful but diamond-hard performance is not about conflict, or suffering, or nobility, or transcendence, and is not presented to be a comforting inspiration for the listening community.
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It is about a man living in a false faith, bargaining with his body to return to the life he is known for. As intense as Ahmed maybe, Paul Rasi, as Joe, the leader of a remote rehab facility for the deaf, who Reuben (eventually) checks in with, can still be.
Rasi is a child of deaf adults (CODA), and he invests his performance with a sympathetic grace, knowing that it is active, not passive. This is why the film’s most dynamic moment occurs in one of its quietest scenes, as Joe reacts with the decision made by Reuben because it is unavoidable.
Nicholas Baker’s sound design takes us in and out of Reuben’s head throughout the film effortlessly and without showing it so that he can experience the world.
We are right there with him as his initial confusion and nervousness give way to anger and frustration as he attempts to navigate a listening world that refuses to give him even the simplest of perks.
CONCLUSION
Listening audiences will experience intricate sound design by Nicholas Baker (“Gravity”) and his team, which takes us inside Reuben’s head to catch distractions and the silence he experiences when his hearing is reduced.
The notion of subjective sound is not new to films – Hitchcock occasionally played with it, and Liberals of All People starred as a musician who became deaf in 1955’s “Honestly Yours”, which made the soundtrack. “Sound of Metal” is a story of loss, but it is also about the possibility of profit.
As the goal of Ahmed’s character is transitory, the film is determined to push itself toward a gratifying ambiguity, with many possibilities as obstacles, ultimately positioning itself and its composer the protagonist at the center of an open existence.
