Notes on Sound of Metal
Notes on Sound of Metal
All criticism is somehow an exploration of the critic. The film, book, album is a vehicle for the critic to say something about themselves. Their politics, beliefs, moral conscience — if one even exists in them — will be on display. Criticism must render a judgement. That is the easy part for it doesn’t require much of a person.
I seek to avoid over analysis of acting, direction, and the like. There are plenty of places to find that and I do not feel suitable to make those judgements. However, the look Ahmed offers in the shower, alone, newly deaf, struck with such force that should make documentarians weep. For a well-done account of the role of the deaf actors and consultants, as well as reference to the deaf community, see Christi Carras in the LA Times.
I loved the film. Riz Ahmed should win best actor and the film should win best picture. It does that which all fiction hopes to do. It feels real.
The film is dense without being inaccessible. It seems to hold everything within. I hesitate to think of a person who has lived so charmed a life that they could not find something of themselves in this film. However, it is likely that a great number of people are not willing nor capable to examine themselves sufficiently to grasp their own connection to a film that is about a drummer who suddenly loses his hearing and struggles in the wake. Loss that is both complete and sudden. It is about living with loss after deciding you will in fact live with it.
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There is a thin black line in the periphery of my left eye. I am 99% sure that it is caused from the way my eyelashes fall and sometimes interlace. This certainty does nothing to the idea that one day I will go blind. Amid all the things I am, one of them is a photographer. I stare at sunsets and sunrises. The bright spots come and go — so far. Nevertheless, the idea of suddenly finding myself having to pay the debt of so many sunsets is terrifying.
The deaf community in this film are not lacking anything. In any discussion of loss, one has to examine what it means to lose that specific thing. Losing one’s keys and losing one’s soul mate are not the same. This seems plainly true. Where does hearing fall in this spectrum. The deaf don’t have something the majority of society has, but they do not lack anything. They don’t experience — a much better word instead of hearing — sound as those who can hear. The scene of Ruben at the school for deaf children, standing around a piano, laying their hands on it, are experiencing music in a way that those who can hear can never know. We [those who can hear] are terrified because we confuse different with lacking. Mostly, this is a projection of our own fear which emerges in the early scenes where is scared, angry, suicidal after his hearing has disappeared. His life as he knew it was over.
The hearing world stands aloof in its certainty that what it hears is the way things are and is thereby made uncomfortable by differently abled people. The very nature of what does the world ‘sounds’ like draws some comparison to David Hume’s idea of custom. That we only think things are natural or constant because they happen in the same manner all of the time. That it is nothing other than pattern and frequency of its repeating which we confuse for truth. When Ruben has the implant, he can ‘hear’ the world again, but there is a miscommunication. Perhaps the whole film stems from the idea of miscommunication. The implant is very different from the natural ear. To those with the ability to hear ‘naturally,’ the sound is painful and distorted (The award for best sound is a lock). It is like a bad microphone that breaks into high pitched noise and static that garbles everything. It follows Ruben like this till the final scene. The world forever changed. Relationship ended. Ruben sits on the bench and the church bell tolls in a painful crackle. He disconnects from the world of hearing. The bell goes away.
The implant fails because it is compared to the way we think the act of hearing should be. That the normative perception arises from culture and perceived normalcy. It is like the fish that doesn’t know it is wet. We don’t know what it is like to be without the ability to hear and we don’t have the desire to know. The hearing community seeks the deaf to conform to it — and the best way is for the deaf to disappear. That for the majority of society, the absence of something must be a disability which must also be horrific. From here a path of dehumanizing begins. At some point in this description of people as disabled is the deliberate denial of their humanity. When seen for what it is, which is something the majority want to keep hidden from everyone but especially themselves, the rage and thoughts of suicide find their source. The world is artificially hostile. The fear is not the loss of one’s hearing. It is the belief that one might prefer to die. It is how people react to a society that has little room for humanity. Real questions of survival are being put forward.
The deaf, simply by their presence, upset the idea of society as efficient and market driven. They reveal the tenuous nature of all our lives and this is too frightening to see because we cannot do anything about it. Imagine if you were suddenly stuck deaf, what help would be there for you? Where would you go? We know that our value as people in the economy is tied to our productivity and to lose one’s ability to hear is so distressing we in the hearing community do not want to think about it. To communicate and understand with a deaf person requires a recognition that we do not speak the same language and have to find ways to communicate. We cannot go as we once did. Combined with the presence of the deaf we might come to understand people as something other than labor units or productivity machines. We might look at someone in Ruben’s position and usher him into a series of services befitting of a humane society. That when Ruben raged in the motorhome, it had come after having tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. He played a show with his ability to understand the music without needing to hear it. Yet, in losing his hearing there was something more essential. How would he eat? Maintain his relationship? Live?
The most troubling aspect of my hypothetical, sudden blindness, and I think corresponds to Ruben’s rage, is that the world, or at least America, is not meant for slowing down nor being seen as valuable for simply being human. That when you lose something that functions as an aspect of your usefulness in society, which is also your justification in capitalism, like hearing, you fear you’ll never be able to catch up. This is the universality of the film. We use phrases like ‘early career’ to describe our 20s, and if you don’t have a good one, you’ll never catch up. The ridiculous idea that the quality of your child’s life depends on where they go to preschool and this sets in motion a sequence that is unforgivingly decisive. The loss of hearing, or sight, is a hardware breakdown that motivates the thought of self-destruction because how can you ever catch back up?
It requires one to relearn everything. Relearn speaking your own name. Not just being stuck in a country that doesn’t speak your language, but you don’t speak your language. Embedded in this is a sense of time. Not in a hypothetical or figurative way, but in the actual amount of time one has left before they die. To find yourself suddenly beginning anew is its own trauma. Yet, the added burden of an uncaring society elevates it unto the fatal. It does so because we no concern for the plight of others.
Ruben’s search for the answer to his problem further revels the depth of the situation and its permeant nature. He is hoping to fix it. The councilor who runs the deaf community, tells Ruben that they don’t believe being deaf is something to be fixed. This tension drives the movie and correlates to something shared in the lives of everyone. He sells everything that went into his identity as a musician. The things he believed were his life, he sold. Music equipment and the motorhome that he lived in, all to gain back his hearing. He traded the very thing that motivated him to get his hearing back only to find the cochlear implant to be something the devil trades in exchange for your soul. Ruben would be able to hear but not as he once did. He would get the technical but not the actual. What he wanted was the past. This is loss. This is the same for all of us.
I think about myself and how I would react to the sudden loss of my sight. I wonder what the sun feels like when you cannot see it. I would still know where to point the camera. The photo is never for me. It is always for you. It is in the sharing — ideally framed and placed on a wall — that the photo becomes alive. Perhaps there is something similar to how music travels in vibrations. It is not something I’m eager to know, but such things never ask you for permission and therefore it is good to think about.
