Sound Of Metal (2019) ***1/2

Darius Marder's debut feature film, Sound Of Metal (2019), is an affecting portrait of a heavy metal drummer that loses his hearing. It's a sparse and expertly edited (particularly the sound, obviously) drama with an excellent central performance by Riz Ahmed. SOM plays out very much like one of Marder's co-story writer's—director Derek Cianfrance— films (the two wrote also co-wrote Cianfrance's 2012 film The Place Beyond The Pines). The film does a good job of placing the audience into the perspective of a person going through an experience that most of us can't imagine going through, while avoiding pandering or falling prey to saccharine movie tropes.