If You Could Hear What I See
If You Could Hear What I See
The Sound of Silence
June 11, 2021
Sound of Metal (2019)
Life is loud. And often angry.
So often we want to tune out, drop the volume, and dive into the ever-fleeting silence of a world overrun with noise. What peace, beauty, and rejuvenation can be found when no one is talking or blasting their music. As these words are written, a muggy but peaceful spring morning is interrupted every few moments by the roar of airplane jets, stomping on the chirps of the birds.
Silence, yes, is golden.
And for some it’s preferable. Permanently.
In 1993 The Atlantic published an article by Edward Dolnick titled “Deafness as Culture” about those who cannot hear and don’t want to. They see deafness as a difference, a preference, not a hindrance, not something to be corrected or pitied. “…they share a culture rather than merely a medical condition.”
For those of us who can hear such a position is not quickly or easily understood, if understood at all. Yes, we love silence. But isn’t what we really love is to hear only what we want to hear? It’s not sound we want to shut out, it’s the noise, the cacophony of modern living, the voices of those whose thoughts we don’t concur with, whose profligacy of unsolicited opinions makes our ears hurt and our minds tired.
But God, or evolution—take your pick, or choose a little bit of both—gave us ears for a reason. We hear danger. We hear music. We hear laughter and the soothing voices of those we love. Where would be as a human race without hearing?
Sound of Metal is a film about a man who is ambushed into deafness. Ruben Stone is a heavy metal drummer. He is the architect of a life of noise. He ignites thrashing, bursting, violent shards of energy and emotion, reaching into his heart and biceps to fill bars and music halls with the primal screams of youth, sex, defiance, and madness.
His craft can sound like chaos, but it’s actually math. The science of sound and damn, he’s good.
But ironically, though also quite reasonably, those years of living in deafening noise suddenly make him deaf. His creation turned on him in the middle of the night and chopped what he loved into pieces and stuffed it down his throat. And here he is, choking on it, grasping for air.
Ruben, portrayed honorably by Riz Ahmed, does not want to be deaf. Duh. He wants a quick fix back to his normal life, back to his livelihood. With the aid of his band mate and girlfriend, Lou, (Olivia Cooke) Ruben is introduced to a community of Deaf people some of whom also share one of Ruben’s other challenges, addiction.
It is at this point in the film that we fall in love. How often do you swoon, instantly, for a character on screen? We did it twice here.
First, we become mad for the character of Joe, who runs the Deaf community, portrayed by the here before unknown (to this writer) Paul Raci. Joe’s character is someone we have seen before on film, and in real life: a Vietnam veteran who, decades on, has grown his hair long while he recovers from addiction, works to help others, and has a heart of gold but can see the shit through the charade with ease.
He is an archetype, but he isn’t. This is because he’s Deaf, yes, but also because he’s portrayed with honesty, humility, and courage by Raci. We don’t always like guys like Joe. They can be demeaning, patronizing, insulting, and annoying but, pardon us, this Joe is no ordinary Joe. He’s the toughest and coolest Joe you know.
Our heart is grabbed a second time in the more traditional sense when we meet the character Diane, played by Lauren Ridloff. She is a teacher at a school for Deaf children and the moment Ruben walks into her classroom she becomes an object of our affection. She is young and beautiful, yes. But she is also a teacher. And we know instantly how special she is. And we would pour cement in our ears if it meant being near her.
Not everyone can be expected to fall for her as quickly. That’s OK. Maybe she’s just mine.
Ruben’s new sphere is one of silence and struggle as he must accept his condition, learn sign language, and figure out what’s next. All the while he misses Lou, and yearns for his music. And let’s remember he’s an addict.
And he doesn’t want to be Deaf. Who would? Some Deaf people are just fine with it. They want it. A quiet world has to be a more treacherous world but it’s also a kinder world. A world in which you must look at the other person. A life of acceptance and vigilance.
But not for a young man who wants to bang the drums, rock ‘til dawn, and hear the voice of the girl who saved him, whom he saved, and is now slipping away like a song at its end, growing ever more faint until it’s gone.
Sound of Metal transports us into a realm we don’t often visit. The world of quiet. And we learn so much about this world often, of course, without hearing a word. We learn along with Ruben. We learn about people we know are all around us but we probably don’t think about too often.
How many movies teach us about anything? We can’t claim that Sound of Metal gets the experience of Deafness, or sudden Deafness completely right. People in and around that community would have to be asked about the film’s accuracy. But even if we were to discover inaccuracies or missteps in storytelling or facts we have still been given a gift of a wider view.
Maybe sometimes the best way to get someone’s attention is to whisper. And maybe the best way to hold their heart and mind is, after the whisper, say nothing at all. --TK
Sunday, June 13, 2021