Silence is golden.

While 2020 was a year to forget for most of us, it was certainly one to remember for Riz Ahmed. The last few years have seen the actor’s star steadily rise, with every passing film growing in stature and budget, however, while his 2020 may feel low-key on the surface, it will surely go down as one of the most impressive periods of Ahmed’s career.

Beginning with the deeply personal Mogul Mowgli and ending with the equally intense Sound of Metal, this past twelve months have evidently been something of a soul-search for Riz Ahmed, as he strives to balance his burgeoning Hollywood reputation with a subtler, more grounded approach. With distinct thematic parallels, these two films have clearly hit Ahmed hard, rekindling a spark that threatened to dim as the blockbusters began piling up.

So, as paradoxical as it sounds, despite the relatively small scale of his work with Mogul Mowgli and now Sound of Metal, this may well end up the biggest year of his career.

While out on tour as one half of punk-metal duo Blackgammon, nomadic drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) begins to lose his hearing. When a specialist tells him that his condition will only worsen, he’s convinced his music and his life are over. With all hope lost and teetering on the edge of sobriety, Ruben’s bandmate and girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) checks the recovering addict into an isolated recovery house for the deaf, hoping it will prevent a relapse and help him adapt to his new situation. However, while he’s welcomed by the community, Ruben must make a choice between his newfound stability and the life he once knew.

Considering there are over 450 million people in the world living with hearing impairment, it’s quite frankly shocking that cinema’s deaf representation through the years has been so flimsy. For many decades, film characters with hearing loss have been ignored and marginalised, with only a few notable exceptions barely masking an absence that feels at odds with the world’s deaf population and the subject’s huge storytelling potential.

Thankfully, however, the past few years have seen a big shift, with films slowly starting to utilise deaf talent and storylines, crafting more compelling and diverse cinematic experiences for hearing and hard of hearing audiences alike. Within the last decade, the likes of Baby Driver, Creed, A Quiet Place, and even A Star is Born have all featured prominent characters with varying degrees of hearing loss, yet none have broached the subject quite like Sound of Metal.

In both its forthright approach to the complex impact of deafness and its willingness to open up a community that rarely finds itself in the spotlight, Sound of Metal is a monumental moment in deaf cinema history. By not only engaging with deafness head-on, but by going the extra mile to immerse us in the devastating and disorientating effects of hearing loss, the film is an absolute triumph.

As ingenious as it is engaging, the film’s impeccable sound design is quite something to behold, as first-time director Darius Marder, composer (and Darius’ brother) Abraham Marder, and the entire sound department go above and beyond to put us in the headspace of someone rapidly losing a sense they rely upon so acutely. Through buzzing, ringing, muffling, and at times full audio dropout, Marder and his team submerge us in Ruben’s situation, as sound and score work tirelessly to conjure a visceral and all-encompassing sensory journey.

Combining sound, sign language, and enthralling visuals, Sound of Metal is a thoroughly immersive experience, a sensory overload of a film that will disorientate as much as it will move. Few films have the guts to engage you the way Sound of Metal does, and despite how uncomfortable it can feel at times, the experience is exhilarating.

On the surface, Sound of Metal’s plot is a familiar one, with its against-all-odds tale teetering on the edge of cliché, however, through well measured direction, impeccable performances, and thoughtful, poignant writing, the film avoids such platitudes. Never tempted to pile melodrama onto the subject or story, the film refuses to overplay its hand, as Marder keeps things simple, honest, and refreshingly grounded.

Cinematic battles against physical and/or mental adversity are certainly nothing new and a well-travelled narrative road for many an Oscar-baiting movie, yet Sound of Metal never feels stale. In keeping things simple and relaying its story with honesty, authenticity, and empathy, the script knows precisely when to keep it low-key and when to spike things with the kind of raw emotion many Oscar-worthy efforts sorely lack.

Inevitably, such a deeply personal story will live or die on its central performance, and in Riz Ahmed the film has found a performer at the very top of his game, someone willing to throw himself head-first into the role and play it with sincerity and compassion to spare. While many actors would be tempted to play to the Academy with Ruben, Ahmed embraces the simplicity of the script and the complex emotions of the subject to turn in his most compelling and satisfying work to date.

Whether coincidence or not, there are striking similarities here with Riz Ahmed’s previous film (or next film, depending on the release date where you live), Mogul Mowgli, with the actor putting in an equally full-blooded performance as a fellow artist struggling to overcome physical and mental demons. Yet, while Sound of Metal’s overall story isn’t as deeply personal as Mogul Mowgli, it’s no less powerful.

While Sound of Metal steers clear of the cultural and racial issues that Mogul Mowgli openly confronted, the lack of socio-political commentary in the film makes for a far more intimate and emotionally immediate affair. Keeping its focus on the notion of deafness itself, the personal ramifications of hearing loss, and the strong bonds of the community around it, the film plays things broad, allowing Ahmed the time and space to shine.

Painfully physical but subtle when it wants to be, Riz Ahmed’s performance takes him well out of his comfort zone, yet he steps up to the plate, embracing the inherent challenges of the role and in faithfully representing the deaf community around it. Powerful without being ostentatious, what Ahmed achieves with Ruben is astonishing, throwing himself into the headspace of both an addict and a deaf person, taking all his fear, confusion, and anger and channelling it into something truly special.

Ably supported by veteran Paul Raci – who damn near steals the show with an astonishing performance of authenticity and subtle authority as Ruben’s deaf mentor – this represents another high-water mark in an already impressive career. After years of climbing the Hollywood ladder, this feels like the year Riz Ahmed took things to the next level, with a big performance in one of his smallest, most intimate films to date.

Brought to life by a career-defining performance from Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal is an evocative, all-encompassing experience that delivers long overdue deaf representation while boiling a complex subject down to an intimate, achingly human level. Mixing astonishing sound design and low-key directorial flare, Darius Marder delivers an artful and assured debut that’s at once transcendent, terrifying, uplifting, and thoroughly disorientating. At times, a profoundly overwhelming experience, Sound of Metal creates the kind of rhythm that’s not easily shaken.

Sound of Metal is available to stream on Amazon Prime now.