The news arrives, and the stages of grief kick in. Denial, anger, and the rest file in one after the other, though never in a predictable way. When we think of grief, it’s naturally connected with death, but it applies to serious illness, too. Anyone who’s been diagnosed with a grave condition, or witnessed a family member go through one, will recognize the emotions at play. In some ways, a scary diagnosis might feel worse than death; a lingering disability might extend the grief for years.

It’s that dynamic that powers Sound of Metal, the first narrative feature from Darius Marder. In the middle of a successful tour, heavy metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) notices a sudden problem with his hearing. A doctor confirms his worst nightmare: he’s rapidly going deaf, and surgery to insert cochlear implants is wildly expensive, and not guaranteed to work. Making Ruben’s journey more difficult is that he’s a former heroin addict, currently 4 years sober. His hearing loss means he may lose not only his livelihood but also drag down the career of his girlfriend and bandmate Lou (Olivia Cooke), sending Ruben into a potentially self-destructive spiral.

Lou intervenes, locating a program for former addicts with hearing loss. She makes a pact with Ruben: participate in the program and abide by their rules while Lou continues the tour. Ruben reluctantly agrees - he’s terrified that he’ll fall apart without Lou to stabilize him. Joe (Paul Raci), the leader of the program, tells Ruben he must cut himself off from the outside world, and learn to be able to sit in silence. It’s perhaps an insurmountable challenge for a guy who not only bathed in sound on a regular basis, but who has so much rage boiling inside him.

What Ruben desperately wants is a fix to his hearing loss - not unlike the other kind of fix he used to depend on. At first, he’s hesitant to learn sign language or acknowledge the future lying ahead of him. The grief he feels for the life he’s lost comes in waves. But in an echo of his past efforts to get clean, Ruben gradually adjusts to the strictures of the program and makes new friends. Unfortunately, he offsets his progress by sneaking access to Joe’s computer, keeping tabs on Lou and researching doctors who might be able to “solve” his disability.

The central performances of Ahmed, Cooke, and Raci are the real draw in Marder’s film. Covered in amateur tattoos and bulked up, Ahmed is instantly believable as a guy torn up by life, someone who has at least a few more rounds to go before the bell. And despite an 11-year age difference, Cooke holds her own, sparking good chemistry with Ahmed. Cooke has often played people older than their years (as well as characters with their own severe illnesses), so she sells Lou’s strength in the face of everything happening to Ruben. And the filmmakers add little details about Lou, like scars from previous attempts at self-harm, to fill in her character without losing focus.

On a technical level, Sound of Metal tries to immerse the viewer in Ruben’s experience. In their mix, the sound team reproduces sonic drop-outs, electrical interference, and alienating silence, stranding us alongside Ruben in his shrinking world. And until Ruben begins picking up some sign language, we don’t get any subtitles for the signed conversations happening around him, isolating him even further. As someone whose only experience of hearing loss was the time I had too much earwax build up in one ear (a pale comparison), Sound of Metal’s audio choices are specifically designed to generate empathy in the viewer. People who have hearing loss cannot simply queue up another movie, like we can once we finish sharing Ruben’s experience. 

Will Marder’s movie help usher in more movies about hearing loss, and find other ways to render that condition? That’s hard to predict - the hook of Sound of Metal relies on the contrast between where Ruben starts the movie and where he ends up. With the increasing number of technologies and services available today, hearing loss is slowly becoming less isolating than it once was. But Sound of Metal proves that we need to see more stories of disability on screen. It could be in lead roles, or even in adapting the film’s sound mixing techniques to better represent the viewpoint of secondary characters in a production. Any of it would help change a diagnosis like Ruben’s from something to grieve over, to something you can live with.

Sound of Metal gets three and a half stars out of four.

Stray thoughts

• Did not expect Mathieu Almaric to pop up here, but he lent the movie some interesting texture at the end.

• Producers need to hurry up and make Olivia Cooke a star already.

• I still have no idea what the Oscars race will look like in April, but I worry that Ahmed will be overlooked.