The film Sound Of Metal was a 2019 drama film about a drummer who loses his hearing.

I like to imagine this film relates greatly to a lot of people since most of us have had to deal with uncomfortable change in our lives, some catalyst or something in our lives that affected everything going forward.

The loss of a loved one.

Moving to a different city.

Breaking up with the love of your life.

Leaving a longtime job.

The birth of your child.

Good or bad, once that change happens, nothing is ever the same again no matter how you try to piece things back together or force back what was.

That is precisely what happens to Ruben in the Sound of Metal, and it’s pretty heartbreaking.

The use of sound in this film won several awards such as Academy awards for Best Sound and Best Film Editing. Riz Ahmed breaks out in this role after playing parts in HBO’s The Night Of as well as Netflix’s series The OA.

The editing is outstanding, mostly for its choices of when to include sound and when not to. To help us identify with the experience of going deaf, the sound around Ruben sounds muffled and distant rather than just quieter. Things like amplitude and sound intensity are factored in. The frequency is also off. 

Things no longer as if they are the same pitch as they once were, and for a musician, that is extremely alarming and off-putting; it almost sounds alien… This throws Ruben into a panic where he physically has to leave the gig and go outside to control his breathing and try to escape the reality that he is losing his hearing. 

This is later explained when he visits with the doctor and the doctor notices that Ruben can no longer hear certain frequencies of sound, or 70-80% of his hearing.

There was a constant effort by the sound team in this movie to put us in Ruben’s perspective as often as necessary, even when he first interacts with deaf people who speak in sign language, we aren’t given any subtitles because Ruben doesn’t know what they mean either. Once he learns, we see the subtitles as Ruben understands them.

These audio illusionary techniques let us hear the world as Ruben hears it and force us to imagine life for the rest of time as silent, which for someone like a musician, that’s incredibly difficult to swallow. All of a sudden, life is upside down. Imagine you doing your day-to-day job or day-to-day hobby and all of a sudden, you can no longer do it.

Now, we do see moments where Ruben’s drumming skills are still useful even following his hearing loss, like when he teaches deaf kids at the shelter how to drum like a metal drummer. But ultimately, we know that things will never be the same for Ruben ever again.

Thomas Flight’s video explains these audio techniques in greater detail.

Once we understand what Ruben is going through with the loss of sound, the rest of the film is this balance between silence and sound, and a lot of foley was put into this film with nice, clean sound production from the sound of skin to cloth movement to kitchenware and house creaks, every sound we take for granted is at the forefront of this movie once no one talks and we are fully enveloped into this deaf community alongside Ruben. 

Mentor figures are one of the most important tropes in film and shows for character development. Ruben’s mentor is Joe, a veteran and recovering alcoholic, someone who knows exactly what Ruben is going through. Recovery from addiction, and loss of hearing.

The scene where Ruben decides he wants to be with Lou again and get the surgery, he confronts Joe and asks for money. Joe asks for Ruben to stay a part of the community, and to embrace the stillness of life. Ruben rejects this, offering one of the more chilling lines I’ve heard in a film. “If I disappear…”

Following this, he meets Lou again and discovers she has completely changed her life around, recovering and rehabilitating from addiction and performing an entirely different genre of music and reconnecting with her father.

Essentially, her life improved, and in a way so did his. Their love story is still meaningful as we understand that they both were in a far darker place before finding each other, thus saving each other, but their time separated has allowed both of them to grow as people, and so returning to the RV doing metal gigs would only bring back the bad habits and addiction in each other – conveyed very, very subtly with Lou’s arm scratching and Ruben’s face of realization.

The title itself is a double meaning, from the sound of metal music blasting in the film’s opener to the sound of the cochlear implants that Ruben spends a drastic amount of money in order to regain his hearing. Another cute side detail there.

Ruben nearly goes through an entire 5 stages of grief-type journey as he’s separated from his lover and taken to a shelter for the hearing that, at first, he vehemently rejects and denies this as a part of his life. Eventually, he comes around to embrace the stillness.

The sound of the implants becomes overwhelming and jarring to the point it is unpleasant. It’s the same aggressive chaotic sound as Ruben’s metal drumming at the beginning of the film, only it can no longer be turned off.

Every sound and word spoken is converted into a harsh, metallic vibration, to the point that being deaf is the only preferable option, and Ruben finally understands Joe’s words to him.