"Sound of Metal" really surprised me.
I thought it was going to be a movie about a rock musician's struggle with suddenly losing his hearing. And that is the specific situation that sets the movie's plot in motion. But this movie is less about learning to live with deafness and more about learning to live with life in general, making peace with things as they change instead of trying to "fix" them so you can get back to where you were. That makes "Sound of Metal" one of the most relevant pandemic movies I've yet seen.
Riz Ahmed is terrific in the main role, and he's wonderfully supported by Paul Raci, as leader of a deaf commune and support group, and by Olivia Wilde, as his girlfriend. One of the film's most devastating scenes is one toward the end where the couple decide to end their relationship, not because they've necessarily fallen out of love, but because the relationship itself is tying them both to a past they need to move on from.
"Sound of Metal" brought home to me how much of our lives is spent absorbing noise. And that's noise of every kind -- emotional and mental as well as aural. The constant grind of news and social media and stupid politicians and advertising and capitalism clamors for our attention and keeps us distracted from things that really matter. How nice it would be if we, like Ahmed's character in the film's final scene, could just turn it off and sit in silence.
"Sound of Metal" won the 2020 Oscars for Film Editing and Sound (richly deserved; the sound design for huge parts of the movie puts the audience in the position of hearing the world as experienced by a person with hearing loss). It was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Ahmed), Best Supporting Actor (Raci), and Best Original Screenplay.
Grade: A.
I thought it was going to be a movie about a rock musician's struggle with suddenly losing his hearing. And that is the specific situation that sets the movie's plot in motion. But this movie is less about learning to live with deafness and more about learning to live with life in general, making peace with things as they change instead of trying to "fix" them so you can get back to where you were. That makes "Sound of Metal" one of the most relevant pandemic movies I've yet seen.
Riz Ahmed is terrific in the main role, and he's wonderfully supported by Paul Raci, as leader of a deaf commune and support group, and by Olivia Wilde, as his girlfriend. One of the film's most devastating scenes is one toward the end where the couple decide to end their relationship, not because they've necessarily fallen out of love, but because the relationship itself is tying them both to a past they need to move on from.
"Sound of Metal" brought home to me how much of our lives is spent absorbing noise. And that's noise of every kind -- emotional and mental as well as aural. The constant grind of news and social media and stupid politicians and advertising and capitalism clamors for our attention and keeps us distracted from things that really matter. How nice it would be if we, like Ahmed's character in the film's final scene, could just turn it off and sit in silence.
"Sound of Metal" won the 2020 Oscars for Film Editing and Sound (richly deserved; the sound design for huge parts of the movie puts the audience in the position of hearing the world as experienced by a person with hearing loss). It was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Ahmed), Best Supporting Actor (Raci), and Best Original Screenplay.
Grade: A.