The false notes are uncommon in director Oliver Hermanus’ affecting and dustily textured romance “The Historical past of Sound,” written by Ben Shattuck from his personal brief story about males in love, collectively and aside, circa World Conflict I and its aftermath. However for a queer love story starring two of the most popular, of-this-moment main actors round — Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor — “The Historical past of Sound” virtually perversely denies your expectations of what a homosexual romance might be.
The grandiose, sweeping emotional gestures towards repression and latent want out of one thing like “Brokeback Mountain” are nowhere right here, Hermanus as an alternative following the lonesome Lionel (Mescal) round America’s hidden corners and finally into Europe for a lot of this melancholy temper film.
Mescal and O’Connor play Boston Conservatory music college students who meet in 1917, spend winding however restricted bouts of time with each other over time, and on the best way to the movie’s rueful conclusion. Whereas “The Historical past of Sound” suffers from some pacing points and detours that flip up as lifeless ends, following Lionel’s path as a budding ethnomusicologist accumulating songs and sounds to document on cylinders, this can be a beautiful film able to wounding and haunting you.
It’s additionally a vivid big-screen showcase for Mescal. The Irish “Regular Individuals” breakout and “Aftersun” Finest Actor Oscar nominee seizes the chance for understated feelings which can be a far cry from the swords and sandals of his most up-to-date movie and franchise debut, “Gladiator II.”
“My father stated it was a present from God that I might see music,” says the older Lionel, performed by a wistful Chris Cooper in 1980. “My father would play B minor, and my mouth would flip bitter.” Lionel is revealed to own a sort of Nabokovian synesthesia that transforms his ear for sound and music right into a kaleidoscope of feeling and psychological course of.
We meet a really younger Lionel in Kentucky in 1910 earlier than we’re transported to Boston in 1917, the place Lionel’s life course alters when he approaches David (O’Connor), who’s riffing on piano in a smoky bar. They go to mattress collectively in one of many movie’s demure nods at intercourse — I wouldn’t name any of the lovemaking onscreen in “Historical past of Sound” intercourse scenes per se, moreover one scene involving Lionel’s later relationship with a girl (Emma Canning). “The Historical past of Sound” by no means comes out and says, “These males are homosexual!,” nor does it pressure to depict self-inflicted and crucial repressions of queer males on the time.
Although that’s to not say that Hermanus’ movie — nearer in tone to the South African director’s 2019 portrait of apartheid-era pining, “Moffie,” than his 2022 looking-back-on-your-life Oscar bid “Dwelling” — isn’t about queer struggling. The draft threatens Lionel and David’s taciturn romance, whereas Shattuck’s script hinges extra on gestures and exchanges than literal declarations of feeling, and each the traumas of struggle and existential uncertainty about his sexuality and wishes finally plague David. Greater than, maybe, they do Lionel. “I don’t fear,” Lionel says at one level. “I like you,” David responds.
The 2 males finally embark on an impromptu journey by way of the backwoods of Maine to gather American heritage songs sung by the native folks, a sort of self-enterprise tutorial task whose goals and objectives they aren’t positive of simply but. Nevertheless it provides Lionel and David time to spend collectively, in one another’s arms bare in a tent, over a handful of nights and weeks, away from the remainder of the world. “The Historical past of Sound” is cautious to not reveal too early or too explicitly how a lot David and Lionel are feeling for one another, although a trepidated departure at a practice station tells you what you must know: “See you subsequent summer time?” “Positive.” Lionel shakes in David’s farewell embrace over what might be the final time they see one another. At the least for some time. These are the moments when the enormously gifted Mescal as Lionel, withdrawn however by no means holding again, pierces the display screen.
Shattuck’s script and story extra intimately comply with Lionel on his personal expedition right into a sentimental schooling. In later years a longtime music instructor, he seems to have had some sort of fraught relationship or hook-up scenario with a European protégé whereas instructing in shimmery, summery Italy, although the closest he’s in a position to get to anybody apart from David is his girlfriend Clarissa (Canning, in a brief however sharp efficiency), a musician who desires Lionel to satisfy her mother and father. Clarissa’s mom warns her to depart him, as Lionel appears to radiate solely unhappiness and a secret inside, David in all probability by no means not on his thoughts over time. (Cinematographer Alexander Dynan gorgeously captures Lionel’s chapter in Europe with all of the glimmery tactile really feel of a Luca Guadagnino film, the place moments trudging by way of the American middle-of-nowhere undertake a extra muted palette.)
O’Connor will get much less of a recognizable emotional arc to work with, although that’s as a result of “The Historical past of Sound” solely exhibits us David by way of Lionel’s eyes, his reminiscences, the uncommon and tremulous moments of togetherness they’ve. Composer Oliver Coates, who coincidentally additionally supplied the ethereal, regret-twinged music for “Aftersun,” writes an authentic people rating for this movie that stands by itself, with Mescal additionally doing his personal singing and evoking a Kentucky accent that’s each boyishly earnest and tentatively coy.
Not all of “The Historical past of Sound’s” second half lands with the identical emotional assuredness of the primary, as Lionel’s path wends and expands even whereas ever wanting again at David because the one he couldn’t include in his grasp. That’s partially attributable to exterior social forces that demand their love be saved non-public, behind closed doorways or the canvases of a tent, however Hermanus and Shattuck aren’t eager about piling on that context, which has already been explored in so many different films extra straight. And I converse on behalf of queer viewers members similar to myself once I say we’re, at this level, over it anyway as a storytelling cue.
“The Historical past of Sound” is as plaintive and lilting as a piano notice in minor key, by no means wallowing in its personal distress however nonetheless eager to discover the psychic sensations, afterglow, and wreckage of a significant connection. If the movie lacks warmth, that’s as a result of Hermanus is dedicated to creating what’s decidedly not a Large Homosexual Sweeping Romance. The feelings flood and hit exhausting, although, in a remaining chapter wherein Lionel encounters David’s eventual spouse Belle (Hadley Robinson, who provides a stirring monologue), who’s stressed and determined for firm and hopes Lionel will keep for just a bit bit longer. There’s a shot of a cigarette left to burn by itself in an empty kitchen that epitomizes Hermanus’ affected person gaze, by no means in a rush to maneuver issues (similar to issues just like the course of affection) alongside for the sake of narrative momentum.
When the grown-into-old-age Lionel (Cooper) says he was “by no means happier than when accumulating songs,” what he means is he was by no means happier than through the occasions he spent with David. He simply can’t come out and say that, compelled to reside in a closet that “Historical past of Sound” by no means identifies or addresses, and the movie is healthier for it. The soundtrack takes a bracing hairpin flip when Pleasure Division’s post-punk epic ballad “Environment” jolts in, a stunning conflict towards the folks songs prior, songs that just about evoke Arthur Russell, the sound of a person alone within the woods together with his ideas, ruminating over his wishes, the place all of it went mistaken or was left unsaid.
“Don’t stroll away in silence,” Pleasure Division’s Ian Curtis sings. Lionel finally does stroll away in silence, however he’s haunted by the sounds and impressions of a romance that was something however.
Grade: B
“The Historical past of Sound” premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition. MUBI releases the movie later this yr.
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