Oliver Hermanus’s “The History of Sound” opens in 1910 Kentucky, where young Lionel possesses perfect pitch—a gift that will lift him from rural poverty to the Boston Conservatory. By 1917, now played by Paul Mescal, he meets David (Josh O’Connor), a charismatic musicologist, in a smoky bar. Their connection is immediate: David plays a folk song Lionel recognises from childhood, and through the haze of cigarette smoke, everything clicks into place.
Impeccable … Josh O’Connor in The History of Sound. Photograph: Gwen Capistran/Fair Winter LLCYou can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
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You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
We are grateful!
Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
What follows is a refined, restrained period romance adapted by Ben Shattuck from his own short stories. David—wealthy, orphaned, playfully calling himself “momentarily unparented”—and Lionel embark on a song-collecting mission along the Maine coast, preserving folk ballads that might otherwise vanish. The irony cuts deep: these men can catalog melodies for posterity but cannot preserve their own love.
The film’s soundscape provides its greatest strength. When Lionel and David knock on doors throughout rural Maine, recording families singing songs passed down through generations, the movie finds genuine spark. From porches and kitchen tables, these vocal performances carry undeniable power—music’s ability to transcend time and circumstance laid bare. The desaturated cinematography by Alexander Dynan softens these moments without diminishing their authenticity.
Mescal and O’Connor share sweet, easy chemistry, harmonizing between trees or lazing by rivers at golden hour. Their first night together is rendered as clearly life-changing, with no coy ambiguity—they just know. Yet the film doesn’t trust its own gentleness. Director Hermanus often dissolves those beautiful folk songs into a relentlessly dignified score, diluting their raw power. The muted palette—taupes, oatmeals, heather grays—creates an atmosphere of hushed restraint that occasionally tips into inertia.
The central problem is Lionel himself. Mescal brings his characteristic naturalism, but he’s distractingly miscast: when we see Lionel as a ten-year-old farm boy, the timeline makes Mescal’s character seventeen at the conservatory, though the actor is nearly thirty. More troubling is Lionel’s passivity. He’s literally along for the ride, perhaps inhibited by class consciousness or the era’s constraints on demonstrative affection. Either way, he remains frustratingly enigmatic throughout.
When David briefly leaves to fight in the war—“Don’t die,” Lionel orders—his absence drains energy from the film. O’Connor, one of today’s most exciting actors, brings charisma and tragedy to David in equal measure, and we miss him acutely. The film’s latter sections follow Lionel alone: taciturn on his Kentucky farm, limp with longing as a choral performer in Europe. A Roman interlude provides gorgeous splashes of color and sunshine, but Lionel never achieves the emotional breakthrough that made Hermanus’s previous film, “Living,” so satisfying.
Small gestures carry weight: David gathering loose feathers from Lionel’s pillow and packing them back into its seam demonstrates the film’s capacity for tender observation. The voices remain hushed like streams through Kentucky woods. But “The History of Sound” ultimately suffers from a detached, try-hard quality. It’s clear this romance is bound for tragedy—if only the march toward that executioner weren’t such a slog.
The coda offers a brief moment of heartbreak and an inspired contemporary music choice, leaving us with the wistful melody of what might have been. The film bursts with passion when focused on folk songs and their authentic connection to the past, yet the central romance never quite catches fire. We’re left appreciating the company of two men who found each other through music, even as we wish their story trusted itself enough to truly sing.
The History of Sound plays in the theatres in Europe.
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