C

Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor find modest chemistry in one-note queer romance The History Of Sound

Oliver Hermanus' film is both musically inert and narratively repetitive, turning its story into a familiar tune.

By Jason Gorber  |  May 23, 2025 | 1:00pm
Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival
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Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor find modest chemistry in one-note queer romance The History Of Sound
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Music is a complicated thing, but it’s also paradoxically simple. Twelve notes in various octaves are used in the Western scale, arranged according to rules and regulations codified through the experimentation of generations. Melodic phrases and jumps in mathematical order and arrangement, resulting in the expression of emotion through the vibration of air. It is nothing short of a miracle that mixes laws of physics and our evolved ability to delineate coherence from chaos. Yet make the smallest of changes—hold a note a bit longer, change the order in which they are presented—and things become discordant. Sometimes, this is the desired outcome, creating something surprising with its inharmonic boldness. Sometimes, however, it’s simply that the tune falters, its effect diminished, either too close to what we’ve heard before to be novel, or so repetitive that it loses its ability to surprise or captivate. Such is the issue with Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound. 

All the notes are there for a symphony. There’s the director, just off the magnificence of the Oscar-nominated Living, an astonishing, still underloved masterpiece that managed to upstage Kurosawa’s own incredible Ikiru. There’s the ensemble, centered on Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, two talents at the height of their powers, each recently coming off iconic performances in already classic queer films like All Of Us Strangers and Challengers. Add in the source in a celebrated short story by Ben Shattuck, handsome photography by Alexander Dynan (First Reformed), a period setting where young love can flourish at a time of great social and political upheaval, and it should all work. Yet it doesn’t, at least not very well, and that’s perhaps the most surprising thing about the film.

The History Of Sound follows Lionel (Mescal), a rural Kentucky boy who tells the audience (voiceover provided by a wonderfully sonorous Chris Cooper) that he has synesthesia, the near-mystical ability to not only hear and delineate notes, but to feel them—to perceive that a B-flat is yellow while an F-sharp is more green, or a D-minor chord is sour on the back of the tongue while a G-major is sweet at the tip. Little comes from this revelation, save that one is simply to accept that Lionel was born in these lonely woods destined for a world far removed from the limitations of his surroundings.

Entering the New England Conservatory as a voice major, he picks out the sounds being played a few feet away at a local gathering. There, David (O’Connor) plinks away at a piano, playing a song that Lionel knows as one of his father’s. The two soon connect, with David talking about having a perfect melodic memory, another mystical talent, making The History Of Sound perhaps the most subtle example of the superhero movie ever made.

David’s passion is for song collecting, and when Lionel introduces him to the hitherto unknown “Silver Dagger,” sung a capella with more than a hint of both longing and seduction, the connection is solidified. Soon the two find themselves on a grand adventure of discovery, heading to the backwoods of the country to find tunes unsullied by outside influence or interference.

This is a terrific conceit, providing the perfect setting to have both musically resonant moments, and conveniently isolated locations to engage in what, at the time, were lustful behaviors outside of social norms. The problem is the storyline, and The History Of Sound doesn’t really know what to make of it all. There are some predictable, almost melodramatic moments of both connection and conflict, and there are opportunities to hear some of these lovely and deeply felt musical moments shine. But it’s all burdened by obviousness, all seemingly sung by rote, as if the songs and emotions are being dissected rather than felt by character and audience alike.

O’Connor and Mescal manage to muster a certain chemistry, but it’s not nearly as electric as one would hope. Similarly, while we’ve been told repeatedly of the magnitude of Lionel’s gift, Mescal’s voice is a fine one, but hardly the stuff of breathtaking magnificence that the voiceover would have you believe. There may even be a brief hint of Autotune that sullies the idea of it as a period piece, sticking out like a wristwatch on soldier in a gladiator movie, though this may have simply been the vagaries of the melismatic flourishes rather than an errant digital pitchbend. 

More grounded in its era, the subject of song collecting is ripe for deep exploration, the complicated legacy of the Lomax father/son dynamic hinted as in the likes of A Complete Unknown. For those with musicological leanings, Andrew Hickey’s A History Of Rock Music In 500 Songs—particularly his episode on “Crossroads“—is an excellent introduction to the Lomaxes’ impact.

This is beyond the scope of The History Of Sound, and despite the pretensions of such a title (Hickey proves humility by claiming to be doing a history, at least), the singsong bits feel more like background music, as if thinking of Ghost as being fundamentally about the art of pottery. There are worse reasons to fall in love than over a shared passion for music, and the recordings on Edison tubes (predating the disc cutters used in latter decades) do provide a convenient way for the narrative to have voices span many decades, the past staying present when locked onto the waxy surface of those spinning cylinders. Yet the end result is too somber for its own good, too one-noted in its repetitive dourness. There’s a sulkiness throughout that makes it less engaging than it should be, more staring-off-into-the-void than it can sustain. From its opening moments, The History Of Sound feels like it’s going to be something grand. It’s this feeling that makes the warbling result that much more disappointing, a song soon to be forgotten.

Director: Oliver Hermanus
Writer: Ben Shattuck
Starring: Paul Mescal, Josh O’Connor
Release Date: May 21, 2025 (Cannes)

 
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