May 5 (Lunar calendar: March 16), 2023 Friday | Dawnxisoul393art
It happened to be very quiet when we watched the film "Sound of Metal" by director Darius Marder tonight. We were impressed by the outstanding performance of Ruben, drummer of the heavy metal band played by actor Riz Ahmed. With such a clear idea and expression, it's hard to believe that this is a director's long film debut. At the critical stage of life, it is very important to feel a calm moment. The whole film is built around this concise point of view. The opposite of silence is noise and anxiety. One is the sound level, the other is the inner level. Therefore, actor Riz Ahmed was set as a drummer of metal music. The noise could not be noisy anymore. Then he became deaf and lost his hearing for a short time. Normal people are still terrified after hearing loss, not to mention a pop drummer who lives on music. The exquisite setting gives Riz Ahmed a lot of room to play, and Ruben was interpreted very hierarchically by him.
This is a touching story involving vulnerable groups. Under the surface story of deafness, this film with simple audio-visual language discusses the eternal problem perplexing contemporary Western intellectuals. The modern medical technology of The modern medical technique of "treating which part of the body has a problem and replacing which organ is broken" has become the God of modern people, almost all the most avant-garde film and television work in the West Point to this theme. The reflection on modernity can be said to be the core of western contemporary philosophy. We should not overemphasize the importance of science and technology, but more so the importance of human interaction. The deaf community in the film was a silent world, but the communication between people seemed to return to a kind of pre-modern purity and beauty. Ruben's strong desire to return to normal life still prompted him to spend all his money, embrace modern medicine, and regard science and technology as God, but still, the loved one was lost forever.
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The film's director had Ruben remove his cochlear implants and rethink his life choices. This film was extremely real and gave the complete negative to the audience. We found this character truly growing after facing his illness, and like his girlfriend's non-reconciliation, all pain was constant and unchangeable. The important thing is to face it, life will continue, but we must first admit that it is bad before we can really face it. Elegant pan-green film color, ruddy skin color, high tolerance brought rich details, and beautiful realistic photography was a solid and rich excellent photography with hard work in drama details and lenses. This was a real experience and an excavation of reality. The sound effect switching of the film also played an excellent role in interpreting the opposite of static and static. We felt Ruben's situation.
A lot of time is spent telling Ruben's anxiety when he first lost his hearing, as well as his inner thoughts of pretending to gradually accept the fact of hearing loss, and the sense of the difference between the final hearing repair effect and the previous one. At the beginning of hearing loss, Ruben was manic and restless. At that time, he was still under the control of "hearing", but Ruben's "perception" ability became stronger under the guidance of Joe and the help of his peers in the hearing-impaired community. Ruben's communication with the children in his community by tapping on the children's slide was perhaps the most moving scene in the film, the rhythmic vibrations were transmitted through the children's slide. This was also Ruben's turning point from "listening" to "sensing" sound. The sound of drums and cymbals gradually changed from an external sound wave vibration to his inner rhythm. The recording skills used by sound designer Nicolas Becker and the real and natural sound captured made this change no longer abstract.
Vietnam veteran Joe lost his hearing when a bomb exploded next to him during the Vietnam War. Decades later, he still remembered the music that sounded in his ear at that moment. For people like Joe and Ruben, who were deaf for various reasons, the sound was a memory. To this end, the director interviewed many people with acquired hearing impairment to build a world after hearing impairment according to their memories. The sound from the outside world would not be weakened evenly, but most high voices were filtered out, leaving only the low-frequency part. In order to immerse the audience in hearing, Nicolas and his team reproduced this feeling through mixing. The sound came into our ears and became low and dull like sinking into the bottom of the water. Behind the sound, the selection was the movement of viewpoint, and the audience could naturally switch between subjective and objective perspectives. Sometimes Ruben listened to us, and sometimes we listened to Ruben. This transformation was also reflected in the strong contrast of sound loudness.
At the beginning of the film, the sounds of Ruben getting up to use the juicer and wipe down the instruments were very clear. But as his hearing deteriorates, these sounds faded away and the vibrant morning became silent. Ruben repeatedly made noise by yelling. These sounds were particularly prominent in a quiet environment. The boundaries between subjective and objective, reality and memory also became more and more blurred in the sound transformation. According to actor Riz Ahmed, when using sign language communication, people could see each other's expressions and body rhythm, and it was difficult to hide from each other. This natural feeling without modification was also reflected in sound design. When Ruben attended the hearing-impaired community mutual aided meeting for the first time, the room was filled with the friction sound of limbs and cloth made by people using sign language, the insects outside the window were also clearly audible, and the environmental sound was highlighted. Ruben lived in a double barrier. His hearing loss made him unable to live as before. His lack of sign language made it difficult for him to integrate into the hearing-impaired community.
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But as Joe said, hearing impairment was not a problem that needed to be repaired. The real obstacle only existed in people's hearts. Every adult in the hearing-impaired community has his own responsibility, Ruben's task was to learn to be a "deaf person". In this process, the choice of film sound perfectly fitted Ruben's mood. When he first entered the hearing-impaired community, the collective life calmed Ruben's irritability to a certain extent, but the news about his girlfriend Lou made him anxious. During this time, the transformation of sound was chaotic and noisy. When Rubin was disappointed to find that cochlear implant surgery could not make him hear the beautiful sound as before, the music, banquet and even the singing of his girlfriend became harsh noise. When designing sound effects for cochlear implants, Nicolas layered the recorded sound, removed the comfortable part, and recombined the remaining sound into maddening metal noise.
Ruben took off his hearing aid, and all the sounds in the film were erased, leaving only the picture in Ruben's eyes and our breathing in front of the screen. The sound processing here was actually an image expression. At this moment, Ruben seemed to have reached the "land of God" described by Joe, where he had never experienced peace. After accompanying Ruben through the suffering for 100 minutes, Ruben sat alone in the noisy street and took off the ambiguous hearing aid equipment. At this moment, the world instantly quieted down, and could no longer feel the church bell, the noise of children, and all kinds of noise. Ruben knew he would never go back. It is when we are truly still that we can have the best ideas for ourselves.
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