Darius Marder’s directorial debut Sound of Metal follows a drummer, Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed) who travels around the United States in an Airstream with his girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke) as they perform gigs in a punk-metal band. His life and career are turned upside down when he rapidly loses his hearing and becomes permanently deaf. He is welcomed into a community for Deaf people, headed by Joe (Paul Raci), and learns how to navigate his new life by learning ASL. Ruben is reluctant to fully accept what happened to him, and he wishes to go back and play the drums with Lou. When he is offered a job to teach at a School for the Deaf, he realises that he needs to make some changes for his future and sells his RV and sound equipment to raise money to get cochlear implants. When Ruben fails to understand the purpose of the community and his Deafness, he is asked to leave. The audience follows Ruben’s journey, not by watching his experiences but also hearing them as well, which makes Sound of Metal even more unique in its narrative; the experience of watching Sound of Metal is quite different from any other film.
Marder takes the audience into Ruben’s aural experience, and we can hear the exact moments of high-pitched, muffled, and distorted sounds. The audience is immersed in this unpleasant but intimate vulnerability and resistance from Ruben’s point of view. Apart from Ahmed’s exceptional performance, another notable element about the movie is the sound design. Marder, who co-wrote The Place Beyond The Pines, worked with Nicolas Becker to create the soundscape of Sound of Metal a year before production.
Becker is a French sound designer and Foley artist with 30 years of experience under his belt, with previous work on many notable films like 127 Hours, Arrival, Suspiria, and Gravity. He engages in the craft with a genuine willingness to experiment with new ways to create sound, and tries to immerse himself in that environment instead of using previously recorded sounds. In an interview with purple Magazine, when asked how he would describe the production of sounds, Becker explains that it is an immersive performance of entering into the film’s space, unconsciously creating an ultra-sensitive point of view for listening. Becker describes that his role as a sound designer and Foley artist helps him interpret the director’s mental vision through aural ambience. Furthermore, he explains that sound has the tendency to repeat itself, and it is important for it to belong to a traditional vocabulary.
Another interesting detail about Becker’s work is that he prefers starting from scratch and creates a personalised sound library for each of his projects. He never reuses the sounds for another project, and prefers to record the sound based on the environment of the film. He refrains from using commercialised film sound libraries, claiming that it is codified and limits the creation of new ideas. For Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, he looked at Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey as his points of reference. Becker worked with NASA and wore a spacesuit to create an internal sonic environment which helped him understand what space would sound like in the movie. Also, he talked to astronauts about the experiences and sensations they had while they were in space. In an interview with The Wrap, Becker talked about the process of creating the sound effects for Gravity. He stated that he attached a microphone in his arm and used his flesh as a sound filter to record the sound of a character using a drill.
For Sound of Metal, Becker wanted to create a first-person approach as the innovative method to tell the story. Marder and Becker spoke to many Deaf people, both who were born without and without hearing, to understand how to capture the degrees of hearing loss. He also spoke to audiologists to describe the sound of implanting cochlear aids. Becker wanted to capture the connectivity between low vibration, to a low frequency, to absolute silence. Marder and Becker went to an anechoic chamber, a room that is designed to remove sound and vibrations, in which you are able to hear your tendons and the pressure of your blood. To get deeper into Ruben’s aural experience, Becker created a microphone to record the inside of skulls and helmets to get the feeling of an enclosed space. To capture the sounds from inside out, Becker attached a mic inside Ahmed’s mouth and recorded his blood flow and the movement of his tendons, and he captured the sound of his eyelids closing. While shooting the scenes where Ruben hears high-pitched noises, Ahmed wore earpieces where he would hear white noise in real-time, which did not allow him to hear his voice. This technique helped Ahmed react to the sounds accurately as the movie shifts from his two perspectives of sounds and silence.
To create the movie’s world, Becker worked with the picture editor, Mikkel Nielson (Beasts of No Nation), to find the right moment to balance Ruben’s sonic and visual perspectives, to shift from the first-person approach to outside of Ruben’s point of view. The purpose of this element is for the audience to be immersed in Ruben’s headspace. This meant that Becker and Nielson had to experiment with different options to keep that element in key scenes.
A prime example is a scene where Ruben and Lou are stacking vinyl to be sold before the gig, Ruben suddenly hears a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He ignores it, goes on stage, and slams his drums. This is where the audience is switched to a first-person POV of Ruben’s aural experience. The high-pitched ringing fades, and low vibration noises start to take over. When he wakes up the next morning and realizes that he can only hear muffled sounds. Ruben rushes to see the doctor, and is advised to avoid drumming for some time, while the doctor tries to make him understand that he is permanently deaf. Ruben ignores him and drums at the next gig, and this time the muffled noises start to fade, and he is immersed in complete silence. He freaks out and leaves the room in a hurry, telling Lou that he cannot hear anymore.
This shift is seen again when Ruben goes to the hospital to activate his implants, and the doctor tunes his device. The sequence of sounds, layered with distortions and hissy noises, seem as if they are not the right frequency. When the doctor changes the tune to another frequency, a slightly clearer tune, the last tune sounds more pronounced.. The aural perspective shifts from the doctor to Ruben, focusing on Ruben’s reaction and sound. His expression changes from elation to confusion, then unease and fear when he realises that these are not the sounds he has heard before. This is another intimate moment shared between the audience and Ruben, where we get to hear Ruben’s hearing. A sequence that offers an experimentation with sounds and perspectives that is clearly unique to the movie itself.
While exploring sound perspectives, Becker also used the Cristal Baschet, which is a contemporary musical instrument, created by Bernard and François Baschet, constructed of metal and glass rods embedded in a heavy plate, and played with wet fingers to create a vibrating sound. Becker collaborated with Abraham Marder to create the score and instrumentals for the film, and it became a significant part of creating the literal sound of metal. The Baschet instrument represents Ruben’s psyche and sounds in his head, with its low discordant sound and eerie music which add subtle and discreet sounds that are not quite an apparent melody. The purpose of the sound design was to establish an emotional connection between Ruben and the audience.
With Sound of Metal’s unique story and intricate use of sound design, it claims to have established itself as a movie that captures the experiences of Deaf people, therefore making it important for Marder to cast people from the Deaf community. Marder adds that diversity is not necessarily what the audience sees on screen, but it must be extended to casting Deaf actors in Deaf roles to show a representation of the world. He cast Paul Raci, a child of Deaf adults for the role of Joe. Raci, who is a Vietnam war veteran like Joe, is not Deaf but grew up with two Deaf parents. He mentions that Hollywood misrepresents the experiences of Deaf people and cast actors who have hearing to Deaf roles. Lauren Ridloff, who plays the woman that Ruben meets at the school, mentions Sound of Metal’s storytelling shows an authentic portrayal of Deaf people. It explores many layers of hearing loss and deaf identity that have never been discussed in a medium like this before.
Sound of Metal is a visceral viewing experience that takes sound design to a new level of creativity. It is effortless, and brings the audience into Rube’s headspace with the most incredible methods by Becker. By foregoing previously used sound libraries, Becker prefers starting from the beginning which helps to explore new sounds in a way that has never been explored before. This freedom creates and welcomes a new perception to visual imagery. The techniques used in the film such as shifting from the visual to aural perspectives, create a level of intimacy, empathy and understanding for the audience. It takes sound design to the maximum level of creativity and depth. It is an emotional experience, and it’s brilliant storytelling and use of sound design makes Sound of Metal one of the best and innovative movies of the year.
