In 1917, Lionel hears, and then sets eyes on, David. The song that David (Josh O’Connor) is singing as well as the man himself attract Lionel (Paul Mescal). The tune is deeply familiar to Lionel – an example of American folk music traditions, created by ordinary people often far away from home or their countries of origin, speaking of love, loss and life.
Both men are students at the New England Conservatory of Music. When David proposes to travel across the state of Maine to archive its musical history, Lionel goes along. They discover a treasure trove of music and also each other.
Particularly in its first hour, Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound is a charming duet between ethnomusicology and romance – tender, unhurried, remarkably subdued except when the plangent tunes are being sung.
The 2025 production, adapted by Ben Shattuck from his short stories The History of Sound and Origin Stories, is out in cinemas. Directed with care and attentiveness to the landscape, its hardy people and the music itself, The History of Sound can do no wrong until it’s time to take up the love story.
Pursuing David and Lionel on their journeys means moving away from the songs that have brought them together and mean much to each of them. The 129-minute film peters out at this point, before catching up in the end with a mini-lecture on why these songs, their lyrics and the way they have come into the world matter.
Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal, two of the most exciting actors around, are finely tuned to each other’s rhythms. However, the film is neither entirely successful as a musical journey nor as a gay romance.
What lingers are the gorgeous sound design, the songs performed by aptly cast secondary characters, Alexander Dynan’s muted colour palette and classical camerawork. In several scenes, the voices float across the screen, resonant even without musical accompaniment. Sound is “something shaking the air, shaking something else”, a character observes. That feeling carries the movie too.
You’ve read Scroll.
Now help sustain it
Scroll is funded by readers, not corporate owners. If you believe our work matters, support our newsroom. Become a member today!
We’re not driven by clicks or corporate interests – just honest, independent reporting. Keep us going. Support Scroll today!