An Honest (and Unpopular) Response to The Sound of Metal, The Movie

WHAT THE SOUND OF METAL & ITS FANCLUB REVIEWS GOT WRONG

As a recipient of bilateral Cochlear Implants (CI), I was stunned to find The Sound of Metal in my Amazon movie queue - a gripping story about an HOH (hard-of-hearing) drummer and former addict who, after dealing with crippling hearing loss, decides to get a CI. The storyline brought me to the center of my life, and I was (cautiously) excited to be represented in mainstream media.

Riz, a burgeoning drummer, is living on the road in his RV – teetering on the brink of success - when something gets in his way: his rapidly declining hearing. The camera blurs through his life in swirling vignettes; conversations become more complex; he can't follow along with his band during shows; using captions, we can "watch" dialogue as he misses critical words in every sentence. These scenes are shot with impeccable accuracy - the disorienting sonic chaos is palpable.

The film's first half does a riveting job of grounding us in Rizs' life and allows a near-tangible experience of hearing loss. But then it takes a hard left into terrain that is even more dizzying - facts and evidence are completely removed - and the film gets drunk on misinformation and linear trajectories. 

Portraying disability in the film is tricky as many of those with disabilities said they don't feel they're accurately represented in movies. It's crucial to communicate proper diagnosis and treatment when highlighting or incorporating disability. Yet film reviewers add another layer to the mess in an attempt to appraise and vet a film's authenticity–so you and I don't have to. All four reviews I found by significant publications voraciously applauded The Sound of Metal, blithely parroting misinformation in a bandwagon of high marks and "must-sees." 

But how do we vet the vetters? 

As Riz comes to terms with his hearing loss, he seeks help from a more than questionable audiologist - a role filled by an older trusty white guy in a lab coat. After a hearing test gives Riz a grim prognosis - fork over 50K in cash for an underwhelming CI surgery. "The surgery is very expensive," he winces and warns. We become immersed in a world that is so foreign and nuanced that we don't stop to question its validity. Instead, we feel enriched to learn about another world. We stop being curious, sit back and drink in all the details, often our first exposure to the world of Cochlear Implants (CI), and blindly trust the gospel before us. But this gospel is, after all, Hollywood, and The Sound of Metal is no exception.

The acclaimed Siskel and Ebert cum Roger Ebert called The Sound of Metal "incredibly refined." The line that irked me the most was this: "There's not a single scene or emotional beat that feels false." Can we let what others call authentic cinematography enamor us to think every Rainman, Forrest Gump, or Pocahontas is accurate? 

For The Sound of Metal to have the perfect story arc, Riz must face challenge after challenge, which reaches its crescendo by taking an accessible, low-fee surgical procedure and falsifying its cost. The New York Times echoed this false claim in a terse review by calling the surgery to improve hearing expensive cochlear implants. Cochlear Implants have been covered by private and public insurance since 2004 –covered by 90% of insurers. When I got my first CI in 2012, I had no insurance, and it was free. When I got my second CI in 2015, my very average insurance covered it, so I had both ears done well before the movie's release in 2020 and only paid a standard co-pay of about $200 and, even if that wasn't affordable, I was offered a payment plan. Maybe because I'm writing this in a post-pandemic world, I'm extra critical of medical misinformation, which is dangerous - it takes those who want to learn more about technology and hearing loss and offers fables. NPR, who also reviewed the film, vouched for its unchecked accuracy and lauded its "uncomfortable truths, instead of heartening fables." 

Advocacy groups also look for character development when disability is portrayed in film. Are the characters realistic? Are they well-rounded? Riz met Joe, who was born hearing and became deaf, only uses ASL to communicate, and shamelessly shuns anyone who gets an implant or attempts access to the hearing world. My audiologist and I discussed this and agreed neither of us had ever encountered a hearing person who chose to stay deaf after an accident. While this mindset may exist, it's uncommon. There are extremists in any subculture, but the Deaf community is unfairly pigeonholed as insular, unaccepting, and rigid. The Deaf community here doesn't see themselves as impaired or broken; they embrace themselves as is and forgo any kind of assistive technology.

Speaking of technology, the film does use captions in a way I've never before seen. I lived through the very start of Closed Captions and had a clunky box in the 80s that connected to our TV well before they became an option on standard TVs. However the "reverse captions" convey what a person losing their hearing experiences by removing random words in the captions as Riz struggles to communicate. The Guardian caught this in its review, saying it's captioned for all, which is outdated at first. The Guardian still claimed it's a movie "rooted in reality and fully captioned for all." How does one who doesn't live that reality verify, or have the credentials to prove, that it's rooted in reality?

Who controls the narrative in the "first wave" of Cochlear Implant media representation? Can filmmakers and reviewers decide what's reality and reinforce unrealistic stereotypes? Are we witnessing artifice or sincerity, swooned by dramatic conflict and perfectly curated adversity scenes that hit the tenor of triumph? Can viscerally engaging cinematography be so immersive that we mistake it for truth? Getting caught under the spell of otherness is mesmerizing but at the expense of misconstruing facts.  

Here's what the film has right – hearing loss is a cocktail; you decide which parts to take and leave, and your linguistic identity is up to you based on life circumstances. But the Cochlear implant - which has had earth-shattering positive results for me and many others - is not the enemy, nor are deaf communities. In a cinematic world where not all lived experiences are portrayed or considered, The Sound of Metal only widens that gap. It leaves us across the bay, further away from fully understanding the simple and complex nuances of hearing loss. In a world of reviews, we often trust the review more than the product itself, bolstering the accuracy and trust given. 

We must also consider the most critical question - why do portrayals of disability in film have to be either heroic or tragic? I think back to Hillary Swank's role living with MS in "You're Not You," which was criticized by the MS community. The tragedy was layered so thick it was textbook cliche - a woman paralyzed by a condition while her husband cheats on her, helpless and reliant on a caretaker. We already see the sensationalism of disability, called inspiration porn, in clips of a baby hearing for the first time as a CI is turned on, assuming a cure has been found. Or clips of a high school student with Down Syndrome going to the prom. Does film co-opt tragic storylines? Are able-bodied being allowed to tell the stories of the disabled?

The PBS documentarian offers a point of balance when reviewing nearly 60 years of disability in film. He says, "In the end, imperfect beats absent. Even in those unfortunate instances where a filmmaker gets important nuances wrong, the art and act of filmmaking, and the process of sharing one's vision with others, can spark necessary conversations. And those conversations, in turn, can lead to unimagined changes in both thinking and in society." I love this argument because even the reviewers of the reviewers, me, also need to step back and be fair in disability perception. I want to see our stories included but ensure that the most extreme example differs from the standard. I think back to the quote by Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed with MS, as the most straightforward answer to this problem: "This message is so simple, yet it gets forgotten. The people living with the condition are the experts."