CINEMA SATURDAY
Actors aren’t always just actors, and in order to navigate the industry successfully they must be able and willing to do more. Some already can. Many actors already have other talents that don’t come to light until the timing is right. There’re some who can sing, play instruments, and some are even proficient in martial arts. Riz Ahmed was actually already involved in music before he started making screen appearances. Recently, he put those skills to the test in Sound of Metal. With him at the top billing, Sound of Metal would even go onto take home a few Oscars.
In Sound of Metal, Riz plays rock drummer Ruben Stone. Ruben travels on the road with his girlfriend where they play gigs across the states.
Oscars are actually fairly trivial, but for what it’s worth, Riz was actually the first person of the Islamic culture to receive a nomination. Trivial or not, that’s saying something. Regardless of how the general public views award season or his personal beliefs, his praise was well deserved. In Sound of Metal, Riz plays rock drummer Ruben Stone. Ruben travels on the road with his girlfriend where they play gigs across the states. When he begins to realize that his hearing is rapidly deteriorating, he begins a journey of adjustment and acceptance of his soon to be unpromising fate.
Throwing out the idea of awards completely and just examining Sound of Metal as movie, there’s a considerable amount to be admired and very little room to criticize it. As far as acting goes, Riz Ahmed’s performance is out of this world. It takes almost not time at all to see his growing frustration and the looming realization of what is to come for his character. Knowing that Riz Ahmed is not actually going deaf adds to the spectacle, as it begs to question how exactly he would even know how to go about performing the piece. He is either highly researched in this area, exceptionally naturally instinctive, he winged it, or it’s just all of the above. Either way, he ruled the set with every scene. The writing saw welcomed contributions from director Darius Marder and Abraham Marder, as well as Derek Cianfrance who is of course a well-known writer/director in his own right; so it’s no wonder this was as solid as it was. Darius Marder’s direction enhanced the performance of Riz, especially with the sound editing. Being that most of the people who will see the movie aren’t hearing impaired, he and his team did a stellar job of showing what hearing loss may ‘sound’ like or feel like on the inside.
There’s no telling what something like this means to the deaf community too. Only people within said community could accurately articulate the importance of a project like Sound of Metal, but it’s certainly not a stretch to imagine. If nothing else though, Sound of Metal is a demonstration of Riz Ahmed’s growing versatility as an actor and Marder’s usefulness as a storyteller. Together the two have created one for the ages, an inspiring narrative that stands levels above the vast majority of Hollywood’s continuous cultural missteps.
