Critics reviews

Ahmed is such an angsty powerhouse here. His hands are always chafing, as if deprived of imaginary drumsticks. He seems to fizz with frustration... Emotionally, the distance he travels to get to the film’s perfect final shot is what makes this a great performance.

With astonishing verisimilitude, Marder conjures a world in which every detail rings true. From the wall-of-noise ambience of Ruben’s rock performances (shot live, in front of real crowds) to heated group debates conducted in American sign language (ASL), Sound of Metal finds universal appeal in the specifics of detail, rooted in Ahmed’s thrillingly committed performance.

This film could just as easily have been about a drummer going deaf who had no drug problem. Sound of Metal tries to do something else, something more complex, but it looks as if disability and addiction are uneasily muddled together, and the film never quite unravels the strands. But Ahmed’s performance clarifies the drama and delivers the meaning of Ruben’s final epiphany. He gives the film energy and point.

This isn’t just some “disability of the week” acting showcase, though Ahmed is sensational. There’s a real film-maker at work here, thinking through Ruben’s experience in cinematic terms.

As a film about deafness, Sound of Metal feels revelatory. Just as cameras switch between points of view, the sound design — credited to a team of five — pulls us in and out of its character’s head, as inventive as the CGI visuals of a blockbuster.

[T]hat the film is ultimately as vulnerable to thematic shortcuts and unsatisfying pronouncements as any other disability melodrama—a genre that requires lessons be learned, if not by the disabled protagonists then by the non-disabled viewers who are presumably hoping to glean something inspiring from the protagonists’ pain and suffering—is a testament to how thoroughly this ground has been trod.

Writer-director Darius Marder’s achievement lies in his ability to build drama, tension, and emotion through the changing visual and sonic textures of the film, for which the director and his sound designer Nicolas Becker have built a rich, complex soundtrack that dips in and out of the world of the hearing and what Ruben is experiencing.

Being unable to hear and unable to listen are two very different issues, and in Darius Marder’s directorial debut “Sound of Metal,” Riz Ahmed gives an extraordinary performance as a punk-metal-experimental drummer and recovering addict who is forced to come face to face with both of them.

At center, Riz Ahmed is an actor with a fierce knowledge of how to occupy a character, how to live inside them and make them breathe. Whomever he is in the moment, we believe him.

An ambitious melodrama that only occasionally veers into maudlin territory, Marder’s first non-documentary feature brings out a career-best performance from Ahmed and refreshingly brings something new to the table without falling into gimmick.

The movie’s a little sketchy and underwritten, and it feels sometimes as if scenes have been pared away or cut altogether to concentrate on Ahmed. But Ahmed really is terrific.

The fragility of daily existence is captured empathetically and compassionately in Darius Marder’s excellent “Sound of Metal,” a film that should catapult Riz Ahmed to the top of any producer’s casting list.