Screaming in Silence: ‘Sound of Metal’ Review and Analysis

Jack Denison on 15 May 2021

*this review contains spoilers*

Sound of Metal is Darius Marder’s (co-writer of The Place Beyond The Pines) tremendous directorial debut. It is a film that pulls the rug from under you and tells the story of Ruben (Riz Ahmed), a recovering drug addict and heavy-metal drummer who begins to lose his hearing.

The film is worthy of merit for many of its endeavours, particularly with its approach from the outset. Ahmed, who lassoed the spotlight with his terrific performance in HBO’s The Night Of, has raised the bar even higher in this latest project. He catapults himself wholeheartedly into his job; spending six months learning to play the drums and becoming well versed in American Sign Language, even opting to communicate with the director and co-stars in this manner and often wearing ‘auditory blockers’, saying that “I couldn’t hear anything, including the sound of my own voice”. Furthermore, his co-stars at the programme where he undergoes a profound character transformation, are members of the deaf community. Paul Raci, who plays Joe the programme founder, grew up with deaf parents and is a prominent figure in the community. This moral approach to the material pays off nobly, with a sensitive and sincere execution.

Witnessing Ruben as he tries to grapple with a world that rapidly and silently melts around him is terrifyingly tangible, jarring and upsetting. The cast (although particular applause to Ahmed) deliver an electrifying, powerhouse of performances that has our undivided attention and makes the film spark, cementing its incredibly intimate and tender depiction of his world-shattering crisis. The sound mixing adds a viscerally potent dimension to the experience. By splitting the film from the perspective of a world full of crazy sounds and his muffled, silenced world as he tries to process his grief, we are left with a tragically isolating insight and downright frightening realism.

The script excels in its incredibly profound character study and thematic philosophies, speaking volumes. It focuses on a troubled, volatile character who is haunted by his demons, calling him back to a life of heroin addiction, who eats, breathes and sleeps metal music but is then suddenly plunged into an icy world of silence and stillness. This razor-sharp radical transformation makes witnessing his hardship and internalising and rationalising of his plight both deeply devastating and harrowing. Ruben is tasked with getting up at 5am to be left alone with his thoughts, a pad of paper, a pen and no distractions. What results is a glimpse into his brittle split-personality, of his old self and his sober self, explosive yet extremely disciplined and earnest, as he is taken over by a tantrum, pummelling a donut into smithereens before putting it delicately back together, multiple times.

Image Credit: Jeff Mitchell, Phoenix Film Festival

Marder executes a profound examination of a tormented soul and the concept of inner stillness. Even though Ruben’s life thrived on chaotic, loud music, we learn that by nature his spirit is soft but misdirected; he often starts his days making healthy smoothies and listening to French Jazz. During his reconciliation with his new world at the programme, we find him in a deep meditative state over a piano melody, integrating and connecting with his new family and generally, the happiest we have seen him. However, when he gets tugged back by his old life and sees a video of Lou (breaking the no-technology rule of the programme), his meditative reformation is intercepted and he invests in an implant that will get him back to not just a life of hearing but to his old life as well.

This feeds into an incredibly impactful scene where Ruben bids farewell to Joe saying that he has to “save his life” and that he can’t just “diddle around” and “have nothing”. Naturally, Joe is distraught by this insult saying that Ruben “looks and sounds like an addict”. This integrally powerful scene demonstrates how Ruben’s self-destructive ego pushes him away from achieving inner stillness, whilst hurting those around him, much like how he acted with his blaring, frenzied past life and how can’t make peace with himself. Ruben returns to the outside world to rekindle his relationship with Lou, to find that she has moved on, unshackled by her demons and has found her inner stillness.

This final act revelation is nothing short of tragic and pulls on the audience’s heartstrings when we learn with Ruben that after burning the bridge with his best shot at inner peace, he actually integrated better with his family at the programme, than when he forcefully tries to reintegrate back into the spoken world. Ruben justifies his exit by saying “that’s life, it just passes” and we truly feel for him because he hasn’t made peace with the fact that the world keeps spinning and as we see, it doesn’t wait for him. This leads to a strong symbolic bow as the film’s curtains close, showing Ruben pensively entranced by the ringing of a bell tower, before he decides to remove his hearing aid; back to silence.

Sound of Metal is the most genuine and raw story Hollywood has had to offer recently and deserves every ounce of praise. A film that screams in silence, and it should certainly not go unheard.

Image Credit: Substream Magazine

Cherry review: An epic and sobering tale

Jack Denison on 10 April 2021

Cherry is an epic and sobering tale of a misfit-turned-war veteran-turned outlaw, who is demonised by his PTSD and free falls through the horrors of opioid addiction and performs heists to fuel his dependency. Tom Holland plays our protagonist, whilst Ciara Bravo is our supporting actor who gets entangled in her husband’s crisis.

Directors, Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame, Infinity War) quickly suck audiences into the character’s world. For the most part, it has our attention in a jaw lock (a third act that wallows a bit too much, overstaying its welcome) as we witness the whirlwind of tragedy contaminating the lives of our characters. It’s a rollercoaster of an experience and wildly entertaining. Holland delivers a powerful performance, graduating from the superhero, tight-suit genre promisingly. With Bravo’s performance thrown into the equation, we quickly latch onto the characters’ decaying romance and are thoroughly invested.

At its nucleus, Cherry targets some solemn, ambitious themes and voices some political comments, illustrating their dramatic ramifications. We are pushed through the film’s skeleton with our misguided protagonist through the betrayal of the military, the ensuing silenced horrors of PTSD and washed up effects of dehumanisation and disassociation; being victimised by the wrath of the opiate crisis, turning to criminal activities and generally falling through the cracks, the execution of its subject material is hard-hitting and unflinching, especially in its depiction of the military’s unsavoury ego.

From a directorial perspective, the Russo Brothers effectively put us behind the eyes of our protagonist. The portrayal of his alienation from the world, whether it may be silhouetted bankers rejecting him with disembodied voices or all of his uncanny-looking colleagues at work coming from the same bloodline, is captured creatively and as audiences, we are won over. Similarly, in the first act, the hyper-colourised sequences represent a poignant comment on the vision of nostalgia, mummified with an aesthetic that’s doused in gloss. The slightly slow-mo movements, the muffling of background clatter, the blurring of the peripherals and dream-like score rings louder and glistens further for those through the looking glass of a crippling addiction.

However, throughout Cherry, we are hit with ambivalence over how the story’s substance is decorated in such an artificial aesthetic. With the Russo Brothers’ victory in wrapping up the Avengers franchise with a bang, its confetti has drifted over into their next project here, resembling some heavy political issue arrows being fired from hipsters. Simply put, the project is over-directed and over-polished, resulting in a vain film that loves itself just a bit too much. Consequently, the film’s loyalty to its subject matter and the authenticity that it delivers comes into question. By choosing to topple in favour of its envisioned aesthetic, in its battle scenes, for example, it falls on its own sword. The perfectly stable boom that sways through the battlefield in a single take illuminating different perfectly choreographed frenzies makes us feel like we’re watching a multimillion-dollar, highly stressful Hollywood film set, rather than immersed and lost in the chaos of the battlefield. Similarly, it feels like at times it overcooks its drama, resulting in some overly theatrical sequences that are impaled by redundancy and some tough drug depiction that assassinates expected discretion, ultimately endangering itself as a gimmick.

By puffing out its chest over its aesthetic, it fails to delegate merit and intelligence towards the unfolding of its narrative, leaving us knowing what’s around every corner with predictable plot points. In its defence, its success in executing its biblically sized story (that we are constantly reminded about with disruptive frames bookmarking which act we are entering) is well ironed out in its sequencing that moves with a brazen pace. However, this is done at the expense of an overly comfortable voice-over narration that carries the delivery of the narrative on its back for the entire journey.

Image Credit: Empire

Todd Phillips’ Joker is a conflation of ‘Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupnick’: What David Fincher’s comments on Joker reveal about the film industry today

Roxanna Zoughi on 21 November 2020

Director of 1999 cult classic Fight Club unapologetically shared his views on Todd Phillips’ 21st-century adaptation of one of the most recognised villains in fiction in his 2019 film, Joker.

As part of promotion for his newest film Mank, Fincher reflects on the massive success Joker enjoyed at the box office followed by a generally warm critical reception, in an interview with The Telegraph. Had it not been for Nolan’s massive success in adapting Ledger’s compelling performance to The Dark Knight, Fincher finds it hard to believe that the 2019 film Joker would have been received as well as it was. “Nobody would have thought they had a shot at a giant hit with Joker had The Dark Knight not been as massive as it was”. He goes on “I don’t think anyone would have looked at that material and thought, ‘Yeah, let’s take [Taxi Driver’s] Travis Bickle and [The King of Comedy’s] Rupert Pupkin and conflate them, then trap him in a betrayal of the mentally ill, and trot it out for a billion dollars.’”

Fincher highlights the film’s undeniable allusions to 1970s and 1980s classics Taxi Driver, which follows the disorientated quest for redemption of unbalanced New York taxi driver, and The King of Comedy, a black comedy film centered around the delusions of aspiring stand-up comedian whose eccentric mannerisms and even attire, are noticeably emulated in Joker. Both films were directed by Martin Scorsese and star Robert De Niro as lead role, who has also appeared alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. With the emulation and re-emulation of previously successful and popular tropes in film, it is perhaps not unreasonable to consider that some directors may be tempted to recycle aspects of older films which, at some level, secure a degree of success, or at the least, attention for their ‘new’ projects.

Whilst Phillip’s direction of colour and camerawork alongside Phoenix’s stunning performance hold up as a remarkable piece of art, the adaption of the comic book villain was not a challenging or revolutionary one; it’s success was at least partly owed to the legacy of Ledger’s performance in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), which had already developed and established the Joker as one of the most alluring villains in fiction. However, that is not to suggest that Phillips did not offer an alternative, enlightening perspective to his adaptation of the character; revealing a developed backstory is what developed the Joker in a way other films had not. But at the same time, constructing a history for the Joker defeats the significance of the obscure meaning behind his actions, which is what made his character both elusive and compelling in previous performances.

Fincher highlights the lack of challenging new material in the film industry today, whose studios “don’t want to make anything that can’t make them a billion dollars”. The reproduction of a character whose success had already been established, no doubt assured film studios of its success; Joker profited over $1 billion at the box office.

However, before criticising filmmakers for the lack of challenging and new material, we should be considerate of their restriction of free movement in actualising their ideas. Whilst some “challenging content” does manage to make it to the big screen Fincher says, directors still face many obstacles to achieving this, which is something he has experienced first-hand; after a 30-year long struggle, Fincher was only recently able to bring his father’s script for Mank to the big screen. So, can we legitimately chastise directors for failing to present viewers with challenging material, when they are compelled to produce films centered around subjects which have already proven to be commercially lucrative? Nonetheless, conceptualizing an idea and adapting an idea for commercial production are evidently two very different things in the film industry.

Fincher’s newest film, Mank, has already received outstanding reviews from critics and will be available for viewing on Netflix from December 4, 2020.

Photo: nofilmschool.com