DRUMMING UP SYMPATHY (SOUND OF METAL)

 

Last December, Variety noted that a third of the lead actor Oscars since 1988 were handed out for roles involving disability.

Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis, Al Pacino, Tom Hanks, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Redmayne are among those who landed Oscars for such roles.

And this tendency to see disabled roles as a route to Oscar glory has been savagely parodied in comedies, with Ben Stiller sending it up the spoof trailer for 'Simple Jack' in the Hollywood satire action comedy 'Tropic Thunder'.

Disabled actors are biting back, as the backlash to Sia's movie 'Music' recently showed.

Not every Oscar winning performance for a disability role should be denigrated, though.

Who would begrudge Daniel Day Lewis or Eddie Redmayne their Oscars for 'My Left Foot' or 'The Theory of Everything'?

Technically and emotionally they are note perfect performances.

And if Riz Ahmed somehow manages to buck the awards season trends on Oscars night and capture the Best Actor award for his performance as a heavy metal drummer going deaf in Darius Marder's 'Sound of Metal,' it would be hard to dispute that result as well.

Ahmed plays Ruben Stone, the drummer in a metal act called Blackgammon - the other half of which is his girlfriend, Olivia Cooke's Lou Berger.

Lou and Ruben live a gypsy life, touring the US and living in a RV as they move from gig to gig.

They are building a following on the back of their live shows, with Ruben pounding the drums with ferocity.

One evening while they are setting up for a gig and unloading their merchandise, Ruben's hearing just goes

Clarity has given way to muffled noises.

It's almost like Ruben has been plunged underwater.

He tries to muddle through in the hope that it is temporary but is barely able to hear a pharmacist who is able to arrange an appointment for him with a doctor who runs tests.

These reveal he has about 21 per cent hearing in one ear and 24 per cent in the other.

Ruben is told to stay away from any setting that involves loud noises to prevent further damage.

Shaken by this news, he latches on to the hope that cochlear implants might restore his hearing but they are expensive.

After a disastrous gig, Ruben cannot conceal his secret for much longer.

He reveals to Lou that he has lost the bulk of his heating.

Lou fears Ruben, who is a recovering drug addict with four years sobriety under his belt, might fall off the wagon in the face of adversity.

Ruben and Lou, therefore, seek the advice of his sponsor Hector who finds him a rural clinic for deaf people who are also battling addiction.

Run by Paul Raci's recovering alcoholic  Joe, who lost his hearing during the Vietnam War, Ruben must temporarily separate from Lou if he is to recover and learn sign language.

At first, he is loathe to be parted from his girlfriend, his mobile phone and the keys to his RV.

However, as he integrates into the community, he finds himself increasingly torn between a developing affection for the residents and a desire to fix his hearing by forking out the considerable amount of money required for cochlear implants.

Ruben's loyalty is pulled in different directions.

Darius Marder and his fellow screenwriters Adrian Marder and Derek Cianfrance conjure up a heartbreaking tale of a man who is plunged into a crisis of identity.

Playing metal is what defines Ruben.

It has given him a relationship with Lou, a life on the road he adores and an ambition.

However that identity has suddenly been snatched away from him by hearing difficulties that make it impossible for him to ply his trade and they will in all likelihood never go away.

In a bravura performance, with Ahmed making full use of his expressive eyes to convey the frustration, fear, desperation and sadness of a drummer whose life has been turned upside down by a hearing disability.

Ruben's desperation to salvage the life he loves is sometimes hard to watch but is compelling.

Cooke is excellent too as a girlfriend and musical comrade who will do anything to help him deal with adversity, even if that means making painful choices.

In a Best Supporting Actor nominated role, Paul Raci is also terrific as the no nonsense but supportive Joe who wills Ruben to accept the harsh reality of what has befallen him and emerge stronger.

As impressive as these performances are, the real stars of the show are unquestionably the Oscar nominated sound effects team of Nicolas Becker, Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc, Carlos Cortés and Phillip Bladh who push the sonic boundaries of cinema in ways we have not seen before.

Under Darius Marder's disciplined direction, they brilliantly convey what it must be like to lose the ability to hear with muffled, distorted noises on the soundtrack.

In one stunning sequence, the noisy morning routine we have seen before in Ruben and Lou's RV of making protein shakes and percolated coffee becomes a soundtrack of dull, barely audible thuds.

In another lighter moment of real connection, Ruben bonds with a boy in the clinic by tapping out muffled rhythms on a playground slide.

Film editor Mikkel E G Nielsen justifies his Oscar nomination too with superb sequences that marry image with sound, while Daniel Bouquet should feel a little hard done by for not landing a Best Cinematography nomination.

In other directors' hands, this material could be mawkish.

However Mauder takes a disciplined approach and avoids cinematic clichés by giving his crew free rein to innovate and marry sound with image in a way that simply dazzles audiences.

Returning to the cast, Mathieu Almaric pops up as Lou's French father Richard, while Lauren Ridloff makes an impression as a teacher in a deaf school that Ruben helps out with while attending the clinic.

In any other year, Ahmed might be a shoo-in to capture Best Actor at the Academy Awards.

But this is no normal year.

After Chadwick Boseman's rapturously received posthumous performance as an ambitious trumpet player in 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom', it is hard to see the Oscar going to anyone else.

Following hot on the heels, however, of his empathetic performances in HBO's gripping thriller 'The Night Of' and as an ill rap artist in Bassam Tariq's 'Mogul Mowgli', it feels like the Londoner has really raised his game as a leading man and He could be a force in acting for many years to come.

('Sound of Metal' received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2019 and was made available for streaming on Amazon Prime in the UK and Ireland on April 12, 2021)

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