Having won two Oscars recently, we dive deep into Sound of Metal, a pioneering film featuring rising stars, Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke.
In an Oscar fever, people lost their mind on a dozen revising triumph screenplays. Besides familiar names and nominations, several stories still missed.
Nominated for six Oscars, the movie is about punk drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed), who gradually loses his hearing.
Lou, his girlfriend, played by Olivia Cooke, forces Ruben to enter a certain community of people, suffering from deafness.
To adopt the new state, Ruben passes through the trials circles, physical, emotional and mental.
Sound of Metal is an example of master editing and sound engineering.
Sound of Metal is directed by Darius Marder, who nurtured this film for a while.
Marder began cooperating on the film with Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines), but the latter switched to Light Between Oceans and the HBO miniseries I Know This Much Is True, leaving the film to Marder himself.
He was so attached to the story he did not want to give it up, finishing it by himself.
The Benefits to Amazon
It took so much time to find the benefit for a complete starring process. This project stayed afloat by the effective plot and pure intentions from actors.
While after the premiere release in Toronto, Amazon studios bought the rights and put forward Sound of Metal as the first big player in their history.
Playing with a benefit, for Amazon, Sound of Metal was a chance to introduce themselves in a universal adaptation.
With music, Ruben rescued himself of addiction. As well as this, Lou’s drums recreate his power from drug abuse, mental weakness to a fighting man.
And along with hearing, he loses both: a deaf person cannot be a drummer, and only a deaf person is allowed to live in a shelter.
Therefore, he was forced to reinvent himself in life.
However, the past is not easy to let go of, and it is the conflict between the new and old life of Ruben that becomes the dramatic basis of the film.
Making Names
Dramatic roles always penetrated the character in a chain of priorities – from the leading tragedy to those, who surround his suffering.
But here is the director to create a compassionate storyline, making sure every character remains an adult figure, not turning any of them into antagonists, not looking for cheap drama in family or love relationships.
All of the contradictory decisions of the protagonists are reasonable and logical.
But if Olivia Cook and Mathieu Amalric are actors with a name and reputation, then Paul Raci was a real revelation of the film.
The actor, who released dozens of episodic roles in other series, played a leading role as the head of the deaf shelter.
Marder chose him for this role because he is directly familiar with the spin subject of hearing loss.
Raci was born into a deaf family, so he is a native of sign language.
Inner Workings
This film reflects the protagonist’s inner world. And when he gradually loses his hearing, the same thing happens to the viewers.
Sound engineers co-operate with the effects as the principal tool to embody this idea.
It’s like an invisible dramatic line that intertwines viewers’ emotions as well as the protagonist simultaneously.
Like whatever Ruben thinks, we are always involved in the scene.
Sound of Metal is a film that is both experimental and universal, in which everyone can easily find something for themselves.
Sound of Metal – the real-life story about addiction, loneliness, maturity and self-determination, and about love – in short, about all that we live.
But at no point in the film does it seem as if they want to teach you something or make you feel special. They just skilfully tell a story that does not require extra words.
Sound of Metal was the pioneer winner in a new category for the Best Sound, including the former sound editing and sound mixing groups.
It was the first award for Riz Ahmed as a Muslim man.
Supervising editor and designer Nicolas Becker, production sound mixer Phillip Bladh, and rerecording mixers Jaime Baksht, Carlos Cortés, and Michelle Couttolenc also got the first Oscar award.
Sound of Metal fought the Golden Statue among the selected – Greyhound, Mank, News of the World and Soul.
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