In 1654, a great thinker and scientist Blaise Pascal wrote: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” And he is right, of course. In fact at no time has that statement been more tested than now, December 2020, a culmination of the year during which the best, smartest and safest thing was to stay inside and everyone failed at it, resulting in thousands upon thousands of deaths.
This is a movie about one man’s journey to find that stillness. Ruben Stone, played terrifically by the always great Riz Ahmed, has the life. A job he loves (beating the crap out of a set of drums for adoring fans), a girl he loves (the also always good Olivia Cooke as Lulu of terrifyingly dyed eyebrows), a vintage Airstream to live in wherever the wind (or tour schedule) takes them. And then Ruben is stricken with sudden deafness and his world is turned upside down. A drummer who can’t drum, a boyfriend, whose girlfriend promptly deposits him in a rehab facility for the deaf and vamooses back to her cushy life with daddy, Ruben is now a man at sea. After some time and some uncomfortable adjustments and reckonings, Ruben discovers a new life awaits him, a life without sound, but nevertheless with purpose. But, while everyone around him has pretty much acquiesced to a silent life, he still wants more. One desperate firesale later and he has enough money for a revolutionary procedure that gives him some sound back, but now his life is a liminal zone between the two, a claustrophobically staticky existence that may or may not be enough to win back Lulu and his old life. So yeah, another poignant steeped in realism Amazon studios movie and, to be fair, a dramatic improvement over the preposterous Uncle Frank that even Paul Bettany’s lanky charm was unable to save from the soapy cheesy ludicrous premise of a bigoted homophobic Carolina family in the 70s suddenly accepting their gay son like it’s some inane afterschool special on inclusivity of love. Sound of Metal actually hits all the right notes, but at times mutedly, which works well thematically with Ruben’s journey. From a brief glance at the trailer (otherwise much like this review they give away way too much) it seemed like a movie about a musician couple working through the impossible tragedy of music disappearing for one of them, but in reality this is very much Ruben’s story. Lulu f*cks off immediately at the first sign of discord, despite their otherwise very happy seeming four years together, a privileged moneyed girl through and through, she was just touring the reality Ruben has actually lived in this entire time. Slumming it with a recovering addict covered in some genuinely hideous ink. And on his own, Ruben for all his swaggering street tough appeal, is a compelling if not immediately likeable character. It’s difficult for him to navigate the rigid constraints of the very narrowminded, do it our way or get out rehab or the possibility of getting his life back. In the end it is uncertain which way he’ll go, he has the opportunity to navigate both worlds, but only to an extent, and there can’t be that many prospects for a homeless deaf drummer with no education or vocational training in the world, so staying clean and sober should be challenging all the more. But once thing is made plain…the man has learn to sit still quietly. So maybe he’ll be ok, after all. Recommended for fans of good character dramas, well acted (Ahmed and Cooke do their own screaming singing and drumming here too) indies, etc.
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