The first time it happens he will be up in front of his girlfriend in the Airstream trailer they share. He gets up early, he always has, and he makes breakfast when everything is empty – like when you have water locked in your ears that you can’t clean no matter how you try. He will try. He opens his mouth wide to release pressure, perhaps, taking a hot shower and letting his ears pound in it; probably washing out what went in there. It will not help. He’s playing a show that night – he’s a drummer, Ruben (Riz Ahmed), wants a heavy metal band with his daughter Lou (Olivia Cooke) and he can’t hear what he’s playing so he punnd le rote. The next night, another show, he leaves in the middle of the set. He will see a doctor. It is not going to get better and there is no solution to the problem covered by health insurance that he does not have at all. He is, as they say, and in this particular pursuit in the way he becomes accustomed to following him, fucked.
Darius Marder Metal sound is a film about being fucked in a productive year, with things like Nomadland and The first cow, a collection of famous and particularly thought-provoking films about situations like loss and being lost. Between these adrift-filled filters and the embarrassment of time-lapse concepts, it seems that films have now, as always, found the zeitgeist’s logo, riding it to shore . Ruben has his health, of course, all this saves his hearing and has allowed the film to record a different course, an effective and essential course, if enough as water for a different career. to fill. Lou leaves him for a while to force him to go home to junkies who also have hearing problems to put his shit together. Did I mention Ruben’s slavery? He’s that too, and the better we get to know him, the more I start to think he’s getting caught up in a performance rush – or maybe catching Lou who has no place for him real in her life if he doesn’t keep beating while she cries into a sea of faces. It would be easy to say that their roles in the band are meters for the relationship except that that seems to be in a way that is not good internally Metal sound, but almost elegant.
For a while Ruben seems to have tried to be productive, albeit in a different way than he was used to: to learn to accept the things he can’t control and to follow the opportunities given to it. But then, like Christopher Reeve Somewhere in time inadvertently searching for memories of the life he left behind, Ruben hears the expert’s call and is torn apart. There is a scene where he sits on board from the founder of the home for junk and hearing impaired people, Joe (Paul Raci), to tell him about a decision he made and how he could help a little. used if possible. We know Joe loves Ruben and I thought he was going to help – but Metal sound it is wise enough to know that Joe likes Ruben enough not to help him. There is so much pain in their interaction. I was expecting a performance of this kind from Ahmed – I was asked to find it in a Raci passenger. I think a lot now about a scene in an empty playground, too, where Ruben falls on a metal slide, sitting at his feet while a young child, with hearing difficulties his head against his head, eyes closed. Matthews pulls back to a middle bullet, then a long shot, and there is something painful about it not only in his writing, but in the richness and prime depth of the image. We may have told, as a genre, our story first to the beat of a drum. That vibration passes through caves in us, immeasurable and forgotten.
Ruben and Lou reunite at her father’s forbidden flat (the good Mathieu Amalric) where his father, Richard, lays him a soft-boiled egg and tells Ruben truthfully that he didn’t -alver loved Ruben for his daughter, but is thankful now that he was there for Lou when no one else was. An early detail is when we see Lou sleeping in the back of their air stream, a hand combed under his cheek. It is a series of straight line splits built up on her arm. Not a remnant of suicide, but evidence of cutting behavior: the endorphin thesis that comes from small deaths going marching, slash slash slash. I was wondering what they looked like the lines on sheet music, or the stroke notes for percussion parts in page music. Ruben tells Lou a few times how she saved her life. Lou tells Ruben the same thing. That doesn’t mean they’ll be together, but it does mean they bought another chapter for each other.
Ahmed gives Ruben an energetic, aggressive energy that would have been hard to sympathize with if it weren’t for the amazing experience and sense of manner that Ahmed brings Ruben as well. It’s a complex accomplishment that will never feel like an accomplishment. I have come to know Ruben, a lot of Rubens. Shit happens to them and then it happens to them. They are good, smart and kind children, but then they show you the scarf where they were once thrown at a party and tell stories about that year they spent homeless. I know Joe too, and Lou as a result of a wealthy upbringing that was forced into a series of unfortunate events. The difference between Ruben and Lou, however, is that Lou has other people who care about her life and history that are not all a sad story of abandonment and unrest. Ruben tells Lou, repeating as a mantra in response to a question she didn’t ask, “it’s okay… it’s okay”. He says it almost, like an incantation, like a backstroke. He does it so she can feel what he means in rhythm as he says it. This is the only way he can communicate now that his hearing is wrong. This is the only way, really, he could ever do.
Metal sound a work that transcends sensitivity and patience. Slow work, deep work, one with almost no real explanation of what has been said and the gaps between responding to your own experiences of love, hope, heartbreak and despair -hope. It is an excellent film. The best I could say about any film is, now, a week after I first saw it, I am now again wondering how Ruben is now – if it has found a way forward, if so, you know, if it ‘s okay. I hope so. He deserves some happiness.
Walter Chaw is the Chief Film Critic for filmfreakcentral.net. His book on the Walter Hill films, with an introduction by James Ellroy, is due in 2020. His monograph for the 1988 film MIRACLE MILE is now available.
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