Sound of Metal
Short description
Sound of Metal centers on Ruben, a drummer in a punk-metal duo called Blackgammon with his girlfriend and bandmate Lou. The two live together and tour clubs across the United States. During a performance, Ruben notices that what he hears no longer matches the sound he expects, and a doctor confirms that his hearing is deteriorating and will likely continue to worsen. A former drug addict who has been clean for years, Ruben is placed by Lou in a rehabilitation community for deaf people, where he is welcomed as he is and begins learning to live without sound. There he faces a choice between the new life he is building and the one he left behind.
The film is directed by Darius Marder, who wrote the screenplay with Abraham Marder; Bert Hamelinck, Bill Benz and Sacha Ben Harroche produced. It is a drama with music at its center, running 121 minutes and made in the United States by Caviar, Flat 7 and Ward Four. Riz Ahmed plays Ruben and Olivia Cooke plays Lou, with Paul Raci as Joe, Lauren Ridloff as Diane, Mathieu Amalric as Richard Berger and Domenico Toledo as Michael among a credited cast of thirty. The production credits 113 crew members.
Released in November 2020, the film drew strong critical attention: critics rated it 8.2 out of 10 across 287 reviews, while audiences on TMDB give it 7.7 out of 10 from about 3,000 votes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Riz Ahmed learned to play the drums for six months.
- In scenes where Ruben tries to come to terms with the loss of hearing, Riz Ahmed wore earplugs that emitted white noise. After some time, he stopped using them and simply immersed himself in the role, communicating with the others through sign language.
- There were no scenes in the script where Riz Ahmed's character plays the drums and teaches deaf children to do so.
- The option to turn off subtitles can be disabled on the Amazon Prime website, but the filmmakers assumed that subtitles would be displayed throughout the film (as they were at the festival screening). They wanted hearing people to experience, even briefly, what it's like to be deaf or hard of hearing, who require subtitles to watch any movie or television show.
- The script and main characters were taken from Derek Cianfrance's unfinished project “Metalhead” about a drummer who lost his hearing and had to get used to constant silence. Cianfrance’s film had been in post-production since 2009. The members of the band Jucifer, Edgar Livengood and Amber Valentine (playing themselves), starred in it. Darius Marder was one of the screenwriters for Cianfrance's crime drama “The Place Beyond the Pines” (2012). Cianfrance personally asked Marder to rework the script for “Metalhead”.
- Riz Ahmed learned sign language for the filming of the movie.
- The role of Joe, the founder of a rehabilitation center for the deaf, is played by Paul Raci. Raci himself has hearing, while his parents are deaf.
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