Riz Ahmed, playing Ruben, a drummer going deaf in “The Sound of Metal”. Click HERE to preview.
I recently watched The Sound of Metal, a movie about a drummer in a punk band, named Ruben, who is rapidly, inexplicably going deaf. I found myself, about half way through the film, unexpectedly welled up with tears. The good fat kind. The ones I didn’t know I had in me that needed to come out. The scene that seemed to spark my salty dollops of cortisol release was one where Ruben, played by Riz Ahmed, sits at the bottom of a metal slide, his back turned away from a younger boy, who is also deaf, perched at the top of the slide. The boy begins to tap aimlessly on the metal and in so doing draws Ruben in with his sonar pings. The sound in the scene is almost absent; all we can hear are the muted bass-driven reverberations of the boy and then Mr. Ahmed’s percussive rhythms volleying back up the slide to his young friend. The boy relaxes into this ancient language, leans over and puts the side of his face onto the slide and lets Ruben’s syncopated vibrations wash over him.
