Drumlines

Watched “Sound of Metal” the other night, and I stand by my earlier assertion that Riz Ahmed should have won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Let’s appreciate the degree of difficulty of his performance: He had to learn American Sign Language and drumming, in addition to the more prosaic suppression of his British accent to portray the American Ruben. All Anthony Hopkins had to do was convince audiences that he was an elderly Brit—some stretch that! And Hopkins’ character suffers from dementia, so even if he forgot his lines, who would know?

*****

Ruben, in “Sound of Metal,” maintains his drumming skills despite deafness. The Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen has only one arm—hasn’t slowed him down. And in “Whiplash,” the main character, Andrew, excels in the cutthroat world of jazz drumming despite being Miles Teller. 

All of which is to say that I think being an excellent drummer may be a lot easier than it’s sometimes made out to be.