Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed) is a punk-metal drummer touring with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke) when he begins losing his hearing rapidly. A former heroin addict, Ruben’s sobriety depends on structure and control, and the loss of hearing threatens both. He ends up in a rural community for deaf recovering addicts run by Joe (Paul Raci), a Vietnam veteran who challenges Ruben to accept deafness as a way of living rather than a problem to solve.
The film won two Academy Awards for Best Sound and Best Film Editing, and earned six nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor. Community response has been overwhelmingly positive, with the sound design and Ahmed’s performance receiving near-universal praise. The few criticisms tend to focus on pacing in the middle section and the film’s handling of its final act.
Hearing the World Through Ruben’s Ears
The sound design is the film’s most revolutionary element. When Ruben’s hearing degrades, the film’s audio degrades with it, shifting between his muffled, distorted perception and the clear sound of the world around him. This technique goes beyond clever filmmaking. It creates genuine empathy by forcing hearing audiences to experience something they normally only understand abstractly. The Oscar for Best Sound was one of the most deserved wins in the category’s history.
Ahmed’s performance is physically and emotionally transformative. He learned to play drums for the role, studied American Sign Language extensively, and lost weight to convey Ruben’s deteriorating state. But the technical preparation serves the emotional truth of the character rather than calling attention to itself. Ahmed plays Ruben’s panic, denial, rage, and eventual reckoning with a rawness that never feels performative. The scene where Ruben first realizes the full extent of his hearing loss is devastating because Ahmed doesn’t play it for drama. He plays it as a man trying to hold himself together and failing.
Paul Raci, a child of deaf adults who is fluent in ASL, brings an authenticity to Joe that grounds the film’s central argument. Joe’s insistence that deafness is not a deficiency, that silence is not something to be feared, challenges Ruben’s assumptions and the audience’s in equal measure. Raci’s quiet authority makes Joe one of the most memorable supporting characters in recent cinema.
The deaf community at the center of the film is portrayed with warmth, specificity, and respect. The scenes of Ruben learning ASL, connecting with deaf children, and finding joy in a different form of communication are among the film’s most beautiful, precisely because they present deafness as a culture rather than a condition.
The Weight of the Middle Act
The middle section, set largely within Joe’s community, moves at a pace that serves the story’s themes but tests some viewers’ patience. Ruben’s gradual adaptation to deafness unfolds in real time, with scenes of daily routine and slow progress that mirror the actual experience of learning to live differently. This commitment to realism means the film’s second act has fewer dramatic peaks than the first and third.
Some viewers find the final act’s dramatic choices slightly at odds with the restraint of everything that precedes them. Without revealing specifics, Ruben makes decisions in the last portion of the film that some find emotionally credible and others find somewhat abrupt, given the growth he’s shown. The film covers significant emotional ground in its final twenty minutes, and some of that compression shows.
Olivia Cooke’s Lou, while effectively performed, receives less development than the role warrants. Her subplot is important to Ruben’s story but feels somewhat underdeveloped as its own narrative, and her reappearance in the final act raises questions the film addresses only partially.
Stillness as Freedom
Sound of Metal’s deepest insight is contained in a single idea that Joe repeats: the world does need fixing. This isn’t resignation or passivity. It’s a genuine philosophical position about acceptance that the film explores with honesty and care. Ruben’s journey is about learning the difference between fixing a problem and accepting a reality, and the film’s final moments, achieved almost entirely through sound design, deliver that lesson with a clarity that words couldn’t match.
Should You Watch Sound of Metal?
This is essential viewing for anyone interested in innovative filmmaking, outstanding performances, or stories about disability that challenge conventional narratives. The sound design alone makes it a landmark film, and Ahmed’s performance gives it an emotional core that elevates it beyond technical achievement. Watch it with headphones or good speakers. The audio experience is integral to the film’s power.
Skip it if very slow character studies drain your patience, or if you’re looking for a film with a more conventional dramatic arc. Sound of Metal earns its emotional payoffs through patience, and viewers who need momentum may find the middle section challenging.
The Verdict on Sound of Metal
Sound of Metal achieves something rare: it changes how you perceive the world, at least for the duration of its runtime and the hours after. Ahmed is extraordinary, the sound design is revolutionary, and the film’s moral argument about deafness is presented with conviction and grace. It’s a quiet film about loud things, a still film about constant motion, and one of the most genuinely empathetic pieces of cinema from the 2020s.