So I did post about this movie before but deleted my post because maybe I was thinking a little too hard about it. I found some parts very great - Riz Ahmed, the sound design used to portray what he was going through, some of the lighter moments while he was learning to deal with his newfound deafness. However I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something deeply wrong with what I was watching. I really felt like the character had found himself dragged into a cult-like setting and that we as the audience were just supposed to be okay with that. Since someone else mentioned that they got the same vibe, though, I wanted to go ahead and talk about it. It is highly unusual for a counsellor to suggest an addict in recovery ends a romantic relationship unless it's clear that the partner is only helping to feed the addict's behavior. Not only was he separated from his romantic partner and only real connection in the world he was forced to. He was given no choice, and even checking up on her seemed to be prohibited as he snuck in to use the computer during one scene. I know that this was supposed to be an all deaf community and that they nay have their reasons for wanting to keep it that way, but it is an eerie cultish thing to do to force someone to cut off all ties to anyone now in the group. And when he does try to reconnect with the outside world his is met with banishment. A simple goodbye, don't ever come back, you don't belong here. Yet not once does the movie even question any of this. My initial score for the movie was quite good, but the more I thought about it, the more it ate at me. There's even something someone else pointed out in their review - even though he went into his situation clearly in the position of a staunch secularist, by the end he seems to be at peace in the presence of an old church, as if to say he escaped one cultish group only to find himself seeking out another. Yet the movie never tries to address this issue. It simply put is out there like all of these things were just normal. I put the blame for this on the writer/director who clearly showed his inexperience in film making for not doing something, anything, more with this. By having the main character so quickly turn from resisting the separation from his girlfriend to almost completely accepting it as just normal all of the tension and drama that was promised early in the movie is deflated and the balloon is left empty. Acceptance is a part of recovery for addicts, not the end all be all. And again, the movie just does nothing with what it had. It didn't need to be turned into a Jordan Peele movie, but it could have been something. Instead it's just fluff, matress filler.
4/10
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