What does it mean to take something for granted? In the hustle and bustle of our busy lives, we often don’t realise, nor appreciate, the simple luxuries that we have become accustomed to.  Access to the internet. Clean toilets.  A sense of hearing.  In Sound of Metal, nominated for six Oscars and winning two, director Darius Marder presents to us a spectacular portrayal of what it means for one to lose their sense of hearing.

The film follows Riz Ahmed as Ruben Stone, a drummer in a heavy metal duo who, over the movie’s runtime, has to come to terms with his loss of hearing, and the effects that it has on his way of life.

Sound of Metal’s Oscars for Best Sound and Best Editing will come to no one’s surprise upon viewing. Through fantastic cuts and shifts in sound and shots, the movie makes no qualms about expertly switching between the perspective of Ruben, who loses his hearing fairly early in the film, and the audience who are assumedly auditorily capable.

An example would be near the beginning, where we get to see Ruben’s normal everyday routine, followed by a near-identical sequence with different audio—showing that this time he is already having difficulty hearing.

The jarring back-and-forth shifts between regular sound in one shot, and stark, tinnitus-like, muffled audio in another only serve to intensify the worrying, uncomfortable feeling that Ruben is experiencing, especially early on in the film.  The soundtrack, or lack thereof, only compounds this—there are scenes where Ruben is sitting awkwardly amongst a group of others like him, in a wide shot with no music, as he looks around at people having conversations in American Sign Language that he cannot understand.

Not all is bleak, however.  As a stickler for symbolism and foreshadowing, I felt satisfied with the ending of the film and Ruben’s character development, whom Riz Ahmed played superbly.  Sound of Metal left me feeling grateful for the things that I have been given, and it will hopefully show others as well that there are many more things in life to be thankful for.

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Adam Wan: A massive film geek and weeb, Mass Communication diploma holder Adam strives to find the next thing to ‘wow’ him, while also critiquing the ones that don’t along the way.