[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.4.0″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.4.0″][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.4.0″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.6.6″ z_index_tablet=”500″ border_color_all=”#ffffff” use_border_color=”off”]Dear Cinephiles,<\/p>\n
\u201cI wonder, uh, all these mornings you’ve been sitting in my study, sitting, have you had any moments of stillness? Because you’re right, Ruben. The world does keep moving, and it can be a damn cruel place. But for me, those moments of stillness, that place, that’s the kingdom of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSound of Metal\u201d (2019) just became available on Amazon Prime, and I urge you to experience it. It deals with a musician who starts losing his hearing. All of a sudden, what he thought he was good at \u2013 what he thought defined him as a human being – is taken away. And he starts to question who he is. What will he be able to do now? Halfway through assimilating this remarkable movie, I was stunned to realize that it was articulating the searching and the challenges that we\u2019ve all been grappling with these past enigmatic and arduous months. All of a sudden, everything that we knew about ourselves was stripped away. Fade out. We were forced to reassess our lives without the stimuli, the relationships, the interactions and things that demarcated us and made our everyday continuum fulfilling. Like Ruben, the main character \u2013 we flailed back in March, as things started to untether. We were on a path \u2013 and all of a sudden \u2013 there was a different plan. I don\u2019t know about you, but at some point I decided to learn how to live in our new condition. In a way, it felt like learning a new language. If I couldn\u2019t connect with a loved one by being in the same room, what else could I do to make a meaningful interaction? In one moment in \u201cSound of Metal,\u201d Ruben is given an assignment: \u201cLearn how to be deaf.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before I go any further, I should state that Riz Ahmed in the main role of Ruben is without a doubt one of the best performances of 2020. It is a demanding role both physically and emotionally. Not only did Ahmed have to learn how to drum like a professional musician, he also had to learn American Sign Language. He transformed his body to illustrate a wiry character ravaged by a former addiction and a tough life on the road. But it is his expressive eyes that gives us a window into all the palpable emotions that he\u2019s undergoing. There\u2019s a deep level of specificity and vulnerability in this portrayal. I had been impressed with his work in the film \u201cNightcrawler\u201d and with his 2017 Emmy winning turn in the miniseries \u201cThe Night Of,\u201d but this is on a whole other level \u2013 an expansive work.<\/p>\n
Directed by Darius Marder \u2013 working from a script co-written with his brother Abraham, \u201cSound of Metal\u201d tells us about Ruben who after years of touring across the country playing earsplitting drum sets starts to develop rapid hearing loss. The doctor tells him that he needs to curtail his exposure to all loud noises, and his first responsibility is preserving the hearing he has left. His bandmate and lover, Lou is afraid that this crisis will trigger a relapse into his drug addiction and convinces him to check into a sober community for the deaf where he will be able to learn to adapt.<\/p>\n
It is there that Ruben meets the manager Joe \u2013 a deaf Vietnam vet and recovering alcoholic \u2013 who is a cross between a guru and a father figure \u2013 and who tells him that if he lives by the group\u2019s rules, his life will be rich as it ever was \u2013 maybe richer. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to fix anything here\u201d he instructs him \u2013 encouraging him to be comfortable with being by himself in a room with his thoughts. Paul Raci – who plays Joe – is a revelation. Ruben learns ASL and starts to teach deaf children about percussion. But Ruben struggles reconciling his new way of living with the need to repossess the way things used to be.<\/p>\n
One of the many noteworthy things about this film is its groundbreaking sound design in which we\u2019re immersed in what Ruben\u2019s subjected to. I\u2019ve spoken in the past about seeing from the point of view of a character. In this case, you hear what he hears \u2013 or doesn\u2019t \u2013 from the very first scene. It\u2019s amazing how your perception starts shifting as the movie progresses and how you start to be more in tune to sounds \u2013 including those that Ruben\u2019s own body is making \u2013 like breathing or even the blinking of his eyes. It\u2019s also astonishing to think of the trajectory of the film which documents the conversion of the way Ruben hears, while his emotions are evolving as well.<\/p>\n
The final minutes in which Ruben bravely embraces his new world are life affirming.<\/p>\n
Ruben : \u201cLike, what does it matter? What does it matter? It just passes. Yo. If I disappear, like, who cares? Nobody cares, man. Seriously. Yo, and that’s okay. That’s life. That’s life. No, for real. Okay? It just passes.\u2019<\/p>\n
Love,
\nRoger [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider _builder_version=”4.4.0″][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.6.6″ border_color_all=”#ffffff” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]Sound of Metal
\nAvailable to stream on Amazon Prime<\/p>\n
Screenplay by Darius Marder. Story by Derek Cianfrance.
\nWritten by Darius Marder and Abraham Marder
\nDirected by Darius Marder
\nStarring Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff and Mathieu Amalric
\n101 minutes<\/p>\n
Writer and Director Darius Marder on Bringing \u201cSound of Metal\u201d to the Screen
\nThe movie and its themes are passionate topics for Marder as he\u2019s spent the past decade trying to make \u201cSound of Metal.\u201d The idea for the movie came 13 years ago, Marder says, when he first met writer\/director Derek Cianfrance, with whom he co-wrote “The Place Beyond the Pines.\u201d \u201cLiterally within 30 seconds of meeting each other, we were talking about (Sound of Metal), at least the seed of this project,\u201d Marder says. Cianfrance had previously played drums for a metal band, but quit as he experienced tinnitus. However, the filmmaker had shot footage of the heavy metal band Jucifer. During downtime between projects, Marder began editing what Cianfrance captured. \u201cI got very obsessed with this idea (for Sound of Metal),\u201d Marder says. \u201cDerek was very clear that he was not going to make this movie. I found this little abandoned baby that I needed to raise, and I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marder was interested in exploring the relationship between Ruben and Lou as well as silence on a very literal level. While Blackgammon\u2019s music is loud, the majority of “Sound of Metal” is quiet and meditative. As Ruben deals with his hearing loss, the audience does, too. Sounds like blenders, conversations or traffic are muzzled, buried in the mix. The movie jolts from Ruben\u2019s sense to a louder world. Even as Ruben experiences the loss of hearing, he still deals with his addict past\u2014a noise inside himself that\u2019s just as deafening, Marder describes. Creating that sound design alone took 23 weeks, but it was worth it to understand Ruben\u2019s physical struggles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of the number of tracks and complexity, the sound mix was as big as any action movie,\u201d Marder says. \u201cCreating that sonic landscape was so exciting and grueling. I was going for a specific experience: As someone in the hearing community, how do we experience that physical journey that we go through in this movie? \u201cMy greatest hope in those moments of complete silence in the film is that we all have to sit in it and recognize what it\u2019s doing to us on a physical level.\u201d (observer.com)<\/p>\n
Marder on the Sound Design of \u201cSound of Metal\u201d
\nThe film (streaming on Amazon) often places us in Ruben\u2019s aural perspective as he navigates his new reality. (It\u2019s worth watching with headphones or a good sound system.) \u201cI had many conversations with people who have lost their hearing and not two people\u2019s experience is the same,\u201d said Darius Marder, the film\u2019s co-writer and director. \u201cBut one thing that\u2019s pretty much true for all people who are deaf is that they don\u2019t lose sound entirely. It isn\u2019t silence.\u201d Instead, Marder and his sound designer, Nicolas Becker, wanted to capture those low-frequency vibrations and other tones. The approach was adjusted for different moments in Ruben\u2019s experience. In separate Zoom interviews, Marder and Becker focused on three scenes as they spoke about some of the techniques and ideas they used to tap into Ruben\u2019s aural experience, including putting microphones inside skulls and mouths. One of the first times there\u2019s a notable change in Ruben\u2019s hearing comes before a show, as he is setting up the merchandise table with his bandmate and girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke). At one point, he experiences a high-pitched ringing, then voices are muffled. Ahmed\u2019s response in that moment isn\u2019t just acting. The filmmakers had custom-fit earpieces made for the actor so they could feed him a high-frequency sound they had created. \u201cHe\u2019s reacting to a very physical process,\u201d Marder said. \u201cAnd that process gives way to a white noise in Riz\u2019s ears in real time that doesn\u2019t allow him to even hear his own voice, which is a very specific experience, to not be able to hear your own voice. It\u2019s what gives rise to a loss of balance and a real loss of control.\u201d This moment signals to the audience that the movie will be taking a much more first-person approach, that we will often be listening through Ruben\u2019s ears. The sequence continues with the band\u2019s performance, when Ruben is sitting at the drum kit, the loud beats slowly fading into low, distant tones.<\/p>\n
In the next sequence, Ruben gets up in the morning to realize his hearing loss has become more pronounced. The sound here comes off as low and rumbly, somewhat cavernous and very internal. That internal feeling is a specialty for Becker, who has created immersive, personalized sound experiences on many projects, from the astronaut drama \u201cGravity,\u201d for which he put on a spacesuit to understand the sound inside it, to the deep-sea disaster film \u201cThe Command,\u201d for which he spent two weeks recording underwater in a submarine. \u201cIf I can put people in a real ambient sonic environment, I can create something very specific,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s about how you relate sound to your body memory.\u201d Becker said that a year before filming \u201cThe Sound of Metal,” he invited Marder to Paris to visit an anechoic chamber. The room is designed to get rid of sound and reverberations. \u201cAfter 10 minutes, you can hear your tendons, the pressure of your blood,\u201d Becker said. \u201cYou reach the physiological limit of your hearing system.\u201d Going deeper into this body-sound connection and conjuring up Ruben\u2019s aural experience involved what Marder called a \u201creal experimentation of muffledness.\u201d Becker mic\u2019d the insides of preserved skulls and helmets to get at that feeling of being enveloped. He also used stethoscope-style microphones, along with mics that go inside a performer\u2019s mouth to create a mix of audio illustrating how Ruben experiences sound from the inside out. (nytimes.com)<\/p>\n
Marder on the Cast of \u201cSound of Metal\u201d
\nTo prepare for the role, Ahmed spent six months learning how to play drums and ASL. Though other actors including Matthias Schoenaerts and Dakota Johnson had been previously attached to the project, Marder says he offered the role to Ahmed midway through a lunch meeting in 2017. \u201cI could see it in (Ahmed): He was hungry; he was game; he was scared; he was courageous,\u201d Marder says. \u201cDuring that meeting, I found someone who was interested in going down to the mat for this role, who would lay himself bare and be out of control.\u201d Another miracle Marder says was finding and casting Raci as Joe. Before meeting Raci, he could have gone with an actor from hearing culture who might have helped finance the film. Instead, Marder says he \u201cbet the farm on finding a Joe.\u201d \u201cI was lucky to find (Raci),\u201d Marder adds. \u201c(Raci) did two tours in Vietnam, dealt with addiction, grew up in deaf culture, and his first language is ASL,\u201d Marder says. \u201cHe is a seasoned actor, an artist with such fine control of his craft. There could be no one else to play that role.\u201d Throughout the process of making Sound of Metal, Marder says he would put himself in dangerous positions like this because he was unwilling to compromise from his vision. Another example came on set when Marder wouldn\u2019t let the cast watch dailies. At first, it was a point of contention between Marder and Ahmed. \u201cAt the time, I joked with Riz and told him, \u2018I\u2019m not going to be your enabler,\u2019\u201d Marder says. \u201cWith dailies, people start looking back and analyzing\u2026I\u2019m not interested in that. I challenged Riz to not be in his frontal lobe, to not question his instincts, to trust and move forward. That was very much what our shoot was all about.\u201d \u201cI had gone through many ups and downs and heartbreak,\u201d Marder says. \u201cThe film came together and fell apart multiple times. Most people around me were sure I would never make this movie because I had such a high bar for what I wanted to achieve.\u201d (observer.com)<\/p>\n
Riz Ahmed on the Making of \u201cThe Sound of Metal\u201d
\n\u201cIn a way, the conditions that Darius set up and the way that we want to approach this film were really very conducive to not overthinking things. When you only get one or two shots of something, you\u2019re not going in thinking about trying it this way and that way. You just have to go from the gut and be in the moment. We were also shooting chronologically, which helps us live through it. And also, the way that it was shot, we didn\u2019t have a lot of takes, but there was an intimacy and an observational, almost documentary style to the way things were done that really helped us to live in it a bit more. There were a lot of different things to juggle, for sure. Learning the drums is one thing, but spending seven months learning them and then having two takes to do the gig is another thing. And you have to make sure that you don\u2019t pull really bizarre faces on camera, which I realized I was doing the day before the gig. The day before the gig, I realized that I was doing this bizarre thing with my jaw when I\u2019m playing the drums. And then, we had the auditory blockers, which were these inverted hearing aids that would emit white noise deep in my ear canal.\u201d There were all of these different things and to be honest, the combined effect of it is to just throw you massively off balance and overwhelm you. In a way, that\u2019s what I seek. I try to put myself in situations where I\u2019m off balance and overwhelmed enough to not be in control and to give up control. At that point, interesting things happen. At that point, you\u2019re carried along by the currents of your preparation and the situation, rather than controlled by decision-making and your intellect. In a way, it\u2019s a gift. The challenges always end up being gifts. That\u2019s something that I really learned in a new and profound way, making this film, because of everything we\u2019ve spoken about, but it\u2019s also something that Ruben does. The challenges can be gifts. The same things you\u2019re running from and are scared of might be the things that bring you closer to yourself. (collider.com)<\/p>\n
Marder on the Core of \u201cSound of Metal\u201d
\n\u201cI think it is a spiritual movie, ultimately. When you strip away all of the trappings of what we think we are, what\u2019s left? And is that enough? To fully grasp that understanding sometimes takes a brutal process. That\u2019s the simple answer to that question. For me, the guiding principle in this movie was through feeling. Sound, vibration\u2014there\u2019s a quality of this movie that\u2019s so present in every moment. It never goes back or slips forward in time. There is not a visual or audio dissolve in the movie. Everything is a hard cut, and that\u2019s because every moment is rooted entirely in itself, never looking for another moment to forecast. It\u2019s always begging us to feel this particular moment, even though that moment might be hard to feel. The idea is of earning through that visceral process the feeling of sitting in selfhood\u2014not the thought of it but literally the feeling of it. And I think of that as the feeling of presence in a movie, when you\u2019re within the presence of what\u2019s on screen and nothing else. So, it was kind of our spiritual guide, in a way. Spiritual, not religious.\u201d (filmmakermagazine.com)<\/p>\n
About Writer and Director Darius Marder
\nDarius Marder is a Brooklyn-based director, editor and screenwriter. He co-wrote \u201cThe Place Beyond the Pines\u201d (12), starring Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper, and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for his first documentary feature film, \u201cLoot\u201d (08). \u201cSound of Metal\u201d is his narrative feature directorial debut. (miamifilmfestival.com)[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Cinephiles, \u201cI wonder, uh, all these mornings you’ve been sitting in my study, sitting, have you had any moments of stillness? Because you’re right, Ruben. The world does keep moving, and it can be a damn cruel place. But for me, those moments of stillness, that place, that’s the kingdom of God.\u201d \u201cSound of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1778,"featured_media":36696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1778"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiff.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}