Sound of Metal

The difficulty of getting used to deafness (not only) during rehab in a community. Very intimate and naturalistic indie festival-fodder, primarily thanks to the engaging (and, tempting as it may be, not for a moment overplaying) Ahmed and his work with all that "noisy silence"; that is, the de-noising, the tinnitus, the whistling in the ears, the implant rustling and the contrast to the amplified sounds of everyday life that we take for granted. It revels in lingering silent close-ups of faces while an irritating whistle blares in your ears. Yes, this makes it slow and idiosyncratic, but unprecedentedly immersive given the medium; it's worth watching with headphones. Perhaps it didn't have to be so cold, detached and predictable; you know exactly where it's going to go and what scene it's going to end with. Overall, one can hardly help feeling that this is exactly the kind of film where, when you mention its title, your first association is "two-hour gala performance of Riz Ahmed" rather than anything else. (20/12/2020)

The powerful story of a heavy-metal drummer who loses his hearing, inspired by a true story. Ahmed’s acting recital is supported by work with sound, which jumps back and forth between general reality and how the central protagonist hears things. Joing the community of the hard of hearing and self-searching is very well presented. The image of the deaf drummer beating a tin slide that a deaf child has his ear pressed onto is a powerful one. In the end, the title Sound of Metal is a cynical play on words, suggesting that metalheads might all be doomed to hear just a tinny echo for the rest of their lives. I can’t fucking hear you! (20/01/2021)

Last year, I saw a film starring Riz Ahmed called Mogul Mowgli, which at first glance is very similar to Sound of Metal, as it also tells the story of a musician who suddenly has to deal with a new stage in his life affected by his health. I liked Sound of Metal a little more in the end, though, mainly because of the story line involving the deaf help centre – Paul Raci and the other "deaf actors" were excellent. But the film was mainly an acting opportunity for Ahmed, who gives a convincing performance, with Olivia Cooke complementing him brilliantly. Personally, I would have been happy to relegate (or leave out entirely) the sequence with the father – fifteen to twenty minutes less running time would not have hurt the film – or to have given more attention to the deaf centre. Still, this is a solidly filmed and acted drama about the fact that we don't necessarily need to hear many important things, we just need to sit down for a moment and listen to our inner self. (18/04/2021)

It's lures you in by pretending to be something it's not, since there's virtually no metal music going on here. Somehow we initially wade through some quality sludge that comes from the musical project Jucifer, who were originally the protagonists of an unfinished documentary from Marder with the same theme as this. Sound of Metal is mainly about the problem of a former drug addict who managed to reformat his addictive tendencies into the intense music that a hearing impairment has now taken from him, and thus his struggle not to fall back into his old vices. Sic halfway through it gets a bit bogged down in the classic clichés about someone who didn't want something at first but then tried it and after a while found that it was actually good, so even though the setting the film explores is portrayed believably (it's clear from the concert scenes that Marder is no stranger to alternative foreign filth, and in the therapeutic compound we're again surrounded by their real inhabitants) and it's well acted. I've been passively watching Riz Ahmed almost since his acting beginnings, and I'm delighted to see him finally getting roles that require more than just a freaky Arab, and especially how perfectly he can handle them. (28/02/2021)

Parmi tous les films nominés aux Oscars cette année, Sound of Metal est incontestablement le plus original quant à son thème. Je n’avais encore jamais vu ni même entendu parler d’un film semblable. Pour moi, les passages les plus forts sont le début, ex æquo avec la situation choquante et le final qui mettent en scène Mathieu Amalric sur fond de musique française. Cela dit, je raccourcirais le film, comme d’ailleurs presque tous les films nominés aux Oscars cette année. (24/04/2021)