Sound of Metal -- The Power of Stillness

amazon's sound of metal was one of the best movies from 2020. written and directed by darius martyr and starring riz ahmed olivia cook and paul racey the film follows ruben stone a heavy metal drummer whose upcoming tour and life is thrown into chaos when he suddenly loses his hearing when he goes seeking medical solutions he realizes just how dire his situation really is his only shot of regaining any sense of normalcy being a pair of forty thousand dollar hearing implants in what appears to be a state of denial he goes to perform at the show the same night and when it becomes apparent that it's an untenable situation he tells lou his girlfriend and bandmate about his condition for the first time he insists that he can still play and in fact should continue to play as a means for raising the money for surgery but at her insistence he goes to live in a commune for the deaf where he meets joe a mentor figure for him throughout the rest of the film joe insists that the goal of the community he's built there isn't to cure deafness or even to see it as a handicap but rather to build a kind of foundation where the community can collectively tackle the hardships they face and lead fulfilling lives at first although ruben goes through a rough adjustment period he plays ball with the idea learning sign language and cultivating a tight-knit bond with others in the community in fact ruben spends a great deal of time in the company of his new friends one day early in the morning joe goes outside and sees ruben tinkering with the shingles on the roof to his surprise and the surprise of the audience joe seems to be a little bit upset by this he takes ruben inside and tells him firmly that nothing in the community needs to be fixed as reuben said the roof looked like it needed some fixing and even if that isn't the case and it doesn't really need fixing some extra roofing attention surely couldn't hurt for an older building so it seems a little bit strange for joe to be at all defensive and adverse to this roof maintenance but if we look at it from his perspective knowing full well that he understands reuben's experience quite intimately i believe joe in this scene is looking at reuben as a man who is seeking any form of distraction he can possibly get his hands on even if it means undertaking some unnecessary home improvement chores joe knows that reuben will have to come to grips with his deafness the hard way he even writes on the dry erase board that he will have to learn to be deaf reuben's efforts to distract himself and pass the time in the company of others will only make it harder for him to find contentment and solitude for this reason joe forces a new project onto rubin journaling he tasks him with getting up at 5 30 am every morning to sit in a study and simply write reuben is a little dismayed by this and when he sits down to start writing he's a little uptight about it and it's difficult for us to blame ruben for his frustration for many of us just the thought of several hours without a phone or screen is more than enough to make us want to smash a couple donuts maybe a little bit more than that picture being confined to a small empty room phoneless nothing but a pen paper and our thoughts to keep us company regardless of whether those thoughts floating around in our heads happen to be positive or negative the potential of this scenario alone is enough to make us start feeling a little bit uncomfortable when reuben is mentally stripped down we can see right away why he chooses to spend so much time with communal activities and fixing roofs in his book stillness is the key author ryan holliday writes of the many positive mind cleansing effects keeping a journal can have on someone especially someone in reuben's shoes who undergoes the mental trials that arise from stressful and traumatic events sitting down and working out your issues working out your anger working out the things that you're grieved about on paper just a wonderful way to process it and get distance so i build a journaling practice into my daily routine journaling is a way to ask tough questions holiday rights where am i standing in my own way what's the smallest step i can take towards a big thing today why am i so worked up about this what blessings can i count right now joe is aware of the power journaling has and nudges reuben in that direction ruben tries he gives it an effort but the storm brewing in his head can't allow him the concentration and clarity for the practice to be at all effective as we see in the second scene of him writing he isn't really writing just angrily scribbling and doodling joe afterwards reaffirms that ruben is an important part of the community saying that he's become very important to a lot of the people and offers him an opportunity to stay long-term reuben is obviously fond of the people there and values the mutual respect and understanding he's found but just can't quite close the chapter on his old life touring on the road with lou he sneaks upstairs at the computer and watches a video of lou singing in paris and while he's unable to hear the music he makes his choice right then and there he sells his drums and his rv and we get a scene of him finally writing peacefully but when he's done we realize it's not a journal entry he's written but a note to joe on a napkin telling him that he's leaving reuben gets the surgical implants put in and returns to the community pleading with joe to first borrow money and then for at least a place to stay for a while as he saves up and gets his bearings under him reuben justifies the choice he made talking about how life just passes and if he were gone no one would care displaying a nihilistic attitude for really the first time in the movie while it clearly pains him joe has to deny reuben citing the fact that he has to think about and look after everyone else in the community and maintain the tenant that deafness is not a handicap reuben with his implants would have undermined that principle and threatened disarray in the community he goes back to the doctor and when the hearing implants are finally put to the test the sound is nothing like it was before [Music] it's horribly garbled and distorted and reuben even laughs almost in a tragic sense of irony he mortgaged all of his means and the community he could have been a part of all for some staticky laughably inadequate reality the doctor acknowledges that the function of the implants is not to regenerate the hearing he lost but merely to trick his brain into believing he's actually hearing the only advice she can offer is to simply just get used to it reuben has given up everything for a lie a bitter consolation when he goes to paris to see lou again he talks to her father who gushes about how well lou has been doing especially career-wise almost implying that it's because reuben was a burden that she was severed from later on at the party the horrible feedback from the implants combined with the agonizing background chatter and commotion prevents ruben from talking to or even hearing anybody relegating him to the lonely outskirts later when he's alone with lou he talks about how they should resume the tour and the old life they once enjoyed her reaction is lukewarm at best and it's then that ruben realizes he's been clinging on to a fantasy this whole time it's only in the last few minutes of the film that he comes to accept the reality in the early light of dawn he leaves the apartment and takes to the streets of paris he sits on a bench and watches the life unfolding around him kids playing on skateboards pedestrians walking to work trucks driving by simple pleasures that all of those participating in take for granted reuben watches it all to the horribly metallic score composed by his implants a clanging church bell agonizes him to the point where he has to remove the implants and is left with nothing but the silence but somehow now it's different it's become appealing all the noise and distorted chatter around him dissolved and he enjoyed a moment of stillness where we presume he fully comes to grips with the state of his true reality he had to clutch at the fantasy with all of his strength just to be able to discover peace within the difficult but salvageable reality rubin finally taps into the blissful stillness not only within himself but within us all earlier in the film in rubin's final meeting with joe joe asked him sincerely and all the moments he sat down in his study to journal if he was ever able to experience any moments of stillness at this point of the film we definitely know the answer but may not be too clear on the true nature of stillness joe describes stillness as the kingdom of god a place that will never abandon you sound of metal is a movie that should make us thankful for the blessings we enjoy but every day fail to take into account such as our hearing simply being alive having four limbs having functional senses is enough for us to be eternally grateful but all of us find ourselves being dragged down daily by trivial things we're plugged into social media we obsess over the news we let little comments and slides nag us and provide them free mental rent on top of that in our everyday lives we're constantly barraged by noise idle chatter that disrupts the progress we're making blaring the babble that derails us from self-improvement noise that prevents us from living our best lives and today it's more prevalent and harder to navigate than ever and i believe the reason why stems simply from the fact that we're more connected than ever we can't enjoy silence and stillness because more often than not we avoid like the plague any scenario in which we'd be left alone with our thoughts think of how often we consume some useless deflating piece of media just to fill in the time i can say i've been guilty of it myself many times time is the only precious asset we have some would say it's the only asset if we're lucky we have a lot of it ahead of us but not nearly enough to consume to our hearts content we all know that our time here on earth is limited yet often we fall into the trap of acting like that isn't the case the noise conditions us into that false belief and practicing stillness is one way we can take a step back and enjoy the simple and meaningful pleasures in life as well as tapping into a well of gratitude for the blessings we do have instead of longing for some superficial and material thing that if acquired will only widen the void within us in the words of ryan holiday each of us needs to cultivate those moments in our lives where we limit our inputs and turn down the volume so that we can access a deeper awareness of what's going on around us in shutting up even if only for a short period we can finally hear what the world is trying to tell us or what we've been trying to tell ourselves instead of restoring his peace reuben's implants only added to the unnecessary noise already ravaging his mind it's only when he gets a taste of the most horrible form of noise that he's able to appreciate the silence you

Channel: Renegade Films

Views: 4,685

Keywords: sound of metal, sound of metal movie, sound of metal film, sound of metal amazon, riz ahemd, Olivia cookie, Paul raci, Darius madder, amazon prime video, video essay, film essay, movie essay, movie video essay, film video essay, renegade film theory

Id: g3h-l0D6Q5Q

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021