Director Oliver Hermanus weaves a rich tapestry of love, loss, and redemptive enchantment through sound in the sensitive, affecting History of Sound, creating one of the most unflinchingly romantic films about LGBTQ people in recent memory. Shown out of competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, this adaptation of Ben Shattuck’s lovely short story teams up Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, whose standout performance anchors a story about two music students whose whirlwind romance in turn-of-the-20th-century New England leaves a lasting imprint. Featuring its distinct painterly cinematography, sorrowful folk songs, and welcomed absence of period-hallmarks repression, the film is a quiet masterpiece that plays out like a lingering melody.
Backdropped against World War I, The History of Sound opens with the appearance of Lionel (Mescal), a farm boy from Kentucky born with a singular talent: he hears music within the mundane noises of life—his mother’s smoker’s cough, a dog’s bark, a frog’s croak. His voice gets him a star turn at a chance audition for a scholarship to Boston’s superior conservatory, where he befriends refined pianist David (O’Connor), a native Newporter who’s obsessed with folk songs. They meet one night in a Boston pub, where a Kentucky song played by David triggers a flash of instant understanding over traditional tunes like “Silver Dagger.” David, with wicked charm coupled with assurance, spritzes water onto Mescal’s tongue in this intimate moment, one forewarning of romance.
Whereas queer period films shun traditional tropes of disgrace and societal disapproval, The History of Sound steers clear of them even when traditional expectation threatens. Even then, however, the film focuses thematically on Lionel and David’s innocence, in a love for each other as much as for music. Hermanus, whose previous films include the visceral Moffie and austere Living, directs in classical restraint, allowing passion and desire to unfold in expressive eyes and discreet movement from the actors. Alexander Dynan’s cinematography echoes the stark loveliness of Andrew Wyeth’s painting style, with beautiful composition and muted palette bestowing timelessness upon the New England landscapes.
The film’s leisurely pace, at 2 hours and 7 minutes, was deliberate, one resulting in walkouts from last week’s press screening at Cannes. Those who succumb to it are rewarded with depth. The majority of action unfolds in 1919, when World War I veteran David invites friend-to-stranger Lionel to Maine to record traditional folk songs from rural townsfolk. Pedaling from village to village, armed with a phonograph to inscribe songs onto a cylinder made of wax, he and his friend lose themselves in rural folks’ oral traditions. These are infused with reverie, from a taciturn mother blending her voice with her daughters’ sweet harmonies with a transporting version of “Here in the Vineyard” sung by Thankful Mary Swain (played by Briana Middleton) at Malaga Island, a community in danger of being uprooted. The music, woven into Oliver Coates’ expressive string score, also performs a character function, deepening a lovers’ bond and enhancing this film’s resonance.
The drama extends beyond Shattuck’s short story to Malaga Island, where a biracial community teeters in crisis and at risk of being destroyed, precipitating a rare confrontation between David and Lionel. It’s a turning point, one where David begins to pull out while Lionel remains steadfast. O’Connor gives a nuanced performance in depicting David’s growing wariness, while Mescal’s Lionel radiates a beautifully certain love.
Their ultimate breaking up at Augusta station is a cringe-worthy moment, David’s despair seen only behind closed doors.
Part two follows David’s successor, Lionel, who joins a prestigious choir in Rome before embarking upon a series of short-term relationships in Oxford. The prose can be rambling at times, yet Mescal’s performance of Lionel’s growing melancholy—his eyes brimming with a desire never far from right beneath its surface—holds one fast. A later cameo by Chris Cooper as elderly Lionel in 1980, a grizzled ethno-musicologist, rounds out the loop of the story. A TV interview about his folk music days provokes a gift from back then, releasing a flood of memory in a passage of anguished emotional power.
The folk melodies, from sorrowful “Silver Dagger” to brutally ebullient “The Unquiet Grave,” are sung with sincerity and emotion. O’Connor sings with rich gusto, and Mescal’s full-voiced performance is charged with unbridled emotion, reciting love and sorrow ballad stories. Hermanus’ direction is superb, juggling the performances with restrained sepia-hued visuals never overpowering the figures. Featured extras, like Raphael Sbarge and Molly Price in roles as Lionel’s parents and Briana Middleton in Thankful Mary Swain, fill out the cast, while those locals from Maine who perform songs provide a touch of realism and warmth.
Comparisons to Brokeback Mountain are inevitable, yet The History of Sound breaks new ground in its own right by concentrating more upon the spiritual and artistic connection between its heroes than upon unnecessary melodrama. Its leisurely pace and lengthy epilogue will frustrate a few, yet the film’s mournful loveliness, anchored by Mescal’s career-high performance and O’Connor’s, makes it a fierce elegy to enduring love.
Film Information:
- Where: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
- Cast: Paul Mescal, Josh O’Connor, Chris Cooper, Raphael Sbarge, Molly Price, Briana Middleton, Tom Nelis, Aedin Moloney, Alessandro Bedetti, Emma Canning
- Director: Oliver Hermanus
- screenwriter : Ben Shattuck, from his short story
- Producers include: Lisa Ciuffetti, Oliver Hermanus, Andrew Kortschak, Sara Murphy, Thérèsa
- Director of Photography: Alexander Dynan
- Music: Oliver Coates – Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes – Distribution : North America (Mubi), International (Focus Features) – Production Companies: End Cue, Fat City, Film4, Closer Media, Tango Entertainment, Storm City Films
