REACHING THE PROMISED LAND
British actor probes his purpose to play a man losing his hearing in Sound of Metal
Riz Ahmed is detailing the arduous process of preparing to star in Sound of Metal, Darius Marder's new film about a punk metal drummer who begins to lose his hearing. He holed up in Brooklyn for several months, learning to drum and working with an American Sign Language coach to convincingly relay the anguish of his character, Ruben, a recovering addict stripped of his livelihood.
“I understand it's a dumb thing for an actor to sit around and talk about how they, like, opened a vein for a role,” he says. “It's a joyous thing. It's lucky to be able to do this.”
The 38-year-old British actor and rapper makes an extra effort to maintain perspective these days. His joy is the sort that accompanies the satisfaction of meeting a daunting challenge. An Emmy win and numerous industry accolades into his career, he evaluates prospective projects using two metrics: “Does it stretch me and does it stretch culture, you know?”
Not only does Sound of Metal try to help bridge the gap between hearing and deaf cultures, he says, but it asks audiences to wrestle with what it means for someone to derive a sense of purpose from outside of themselves. This is a movie about breaking up — in the romantic sense, as Ruben checks into a sober house for deaf people and must work past a codependency on his girlfriend and bandmate, Lou (Olivia Cooke), but even more so in the way trauma changes his relationship with the world and the life he once led.
In March, he released The Long Goodbye, a conceptual album taking on the extended metaphor of a toxic love affair between Britain and British Asians. He conceived of the record in the wake of Brexit but notes that it resonates with listeners who feel abandoned by their countries amid the raging pandemic.
“For me, actually, it's a journey that's very similar to the one that Ruben goes on — Ruben and our society, both workaholics suddenly sent into lockdown, a kind of purgatory, by a health crisis that forces them to reassess what really matters, and who they are, and what gives them worth,” Ahmed says.
“What does really matter? Is it the things we've been chasing? Or is it the things that have been under our noses the whole time?”
While a supporting turn in the 2014 thriller Nightcrawler set him on a path to U.S. stardom — manifested in an HBO miniseries and Star Wars movie — his surprisingly tender performance in 2010s Four Lions, a satire about inept Englishmen who aspire to be suicide bombers, is just as compelling a testament.
Born in Wembley, northwest of London, England, to Pakistani parents, he grew up code-switching and says that sort of shape-shifting can be an “incredible” asset but one that “also means you have to
What does really matter? Is it the things we've been chasing? Or is it the things that have been under our noses the whole time?
leave part of yourself at the door every time you enter a room.
“As someone who's been told they are not an archetypal, relatable human,” he says, “I have to take a leap of faith to believe that my specific experience can be universal, and my pain, sadness, happiness, joy are valid colours to paint with, you know?”
He finally took the leap with Sound of Metal, now available on Amazon Prime. In conveying Ruben's devastation upon being forced to leave the tour, Ahmed channelled his distress from the period after the HBO première of The Night Of, the 2016 miniseries about a Pakistani-american college student accused of murder. He overextended himself and hit a wall of physical exhaustion.
“I could relate in a small way and a very different way, to this feeling that Ruben had of, who am I without this?” he recalls. “And, this thing I love might be taken away from me. But that's what love is. ... There's always potential for heartbreak.”
The Long Goodbye marks Ahmed's first album under his full name. Scattered throughout are voice memos recorded by celebrities such as Mahershala Ali and Hasan Minhaj. Minhaj says he derives as much inspiration from Ahmed as he does Dave Chappelle, noting that he and the rapper are both the children of South Asian immigrants. “I love that his landing point was, it doesn't matter what colour passport you hold — really what's most important is the value that we give ourselves,” Minhaj says. “I think for brown diaspora kids, that's a big deal.”
Ahmed reflects in a 2016 book of essays called The Good Immigrant on how the entertainment industry has classified him. He describes three career stages for non-white actors: first, playing two-dimensional stereotypes; then, attempting subversive portrayals of those same stereotypes; and finally, reaching “the Promised Land, where you play a character whose story is not intrinsically linked to his race.”