The History Of Sound

The History of Sound, directed by Oliver Hermanus and adapted by Ben Shattuck from his own short story, is a film that resists the easy categorization of the sweeping queer epic that many expected it to be. With Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor cast as lovers brought together by music in early 20th-century America, the setup seemed almost designed to invite comparison to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. Yet what emerges is a deliberately muted, contemplative piece—less a tale of forbidden passion than a quiet study of memory, loss, and the fragments of intimacy that define a life long after the moments themselves have faded.

The film opens in rural Kentucky, with a young Lionel discovering his unusual gift: synesthesia, the ability to “see” music in colors and tastes. Narrated in old age by Chris Cooper, Lionel’s voiceover sets the tone for a story not about declarations of love but about the way sound, song, and fleeting encounters reverberate across decades. When Lionel later meets David (Josh O’Connor) at the Boston Conservatory in 1917, their shared obsession with folk songs becomes both their language of courtship and their shield. A song at a piano bar, a tentative walk home, a glass of water that becomes a flirtatious exchange—Hermanus stages these moments with restraint, opting for ellipses rather than revelations. For some, the deliberate half-light of their first kiss or the demure fade-outs might frustrate, but they also capture a truth about queer desire at that time: often lived in suggestion, in glances, in what remained unsaid.

The heart of the film is the 1919 expedition to Maine, where Lionel and David travel the backwoods recording folk songs on wax cylinders. Here, the movie finds its most tender register. The act of preserving voices—farmers, women, children, the marginalized—becomes an analogue for Lionel’s desperate attempt to hold on to David. One unforgettable scene shows a wary woman eyeing the recording machine as if it might harm her before she delivers a song of aching beauty, her daughters harmonizing beside her. It is in these folk ballads, in the crackling sound etched into wax, that the lovers’ bond crystallizes. Hermanus, working with cinematographer Alexander Dynan, frames these sequences with the stillness of an Andrew Wyeth painting, the landscapes becoming as much characters as the men who traverse them. The Maine wilderness seems to momentarily erase societal constraints, offering Lionel and David a world of their own, one that collapses as soon as they return to “civilization.”

But where Brokeback Mountain found fire in repression, The History of Sound insists on understatement. Paul Mescal, behind wire-rimmed glasses and softened by shyness, embodies Lionel as a man too passive to seize happiness when it brushes against him. His performance can feel frustratingly still, yet that very stillness mirrors Lionel’s life: a series of almosts, of could-have-beens, of echoes of David that never quite take form again. Josh O’Connor, by contrast, brings David a wit and a guarded vitality, his playful confidence shading into weariness after war and loss. Their chemistry is palpable yet fleeting, for Hermanus’ script keeps the men apart for long stretches, following Lionel alone to Rome, Oxford, and beyond. Lovers—Alessandro Bedetti’s Italian companion, Emma Canning’s bright English girlfriend—dot his path, but they are detours, shadows of the love he left behind.

There is something almost cruel in the imbalance: Josh O’Connor disappears for much of the film, while Lionel’s solitary wanderings dominate. The result is a persistent ache, as though the film itself is haunted by David’s absence. Hermanus deepens this melancholy with a painterly palette—sepia tones for America, golden warmth for Rome, muted greys for England—that underscores Lionel’s inability to locate joy anywhere but in memory. Even the score by Oliver Coates, which moves between tender folk arrangements and mournful strings, feels designed to evoke longing rather than fulfillment.

The film’s most stirring moments arrive late, with Chris Cooper’s quietly devastating turn as Lionel in old age. In a televised interview, his voice trembles as he recalls the years spent archiving folk music, when in truth he is recalling David. When he receives a gift tied to their past, the weight of decades collapses into a single moment of recognition. Cooper, with minimal gestures, imbues Lionel with a lifetime of regret, of happiness never reclaimed, of the strange persistence of a voice long gone. The epilogue, understated yet deeply moving, lingers long after the credits roll, a reminder that love denied expression never truly disappears—it simply resounds in memory like a song half-heard across time.

And yet, The History of Sound is not without its flaws. Its pacing is glacial, its visual solemnity occasionally suffocating, and its refusal to lean into passion may alienate those who came expecting something more visceral. Certain subplots, like the detour to Malaga Island and its evicted Black community, hint at broader themes of displacement and injustice but vanish before they can fully resonate. At times the film seems caught between wanting to be a grand romance and an academic meditation on music and memory, landing in a liminal space that satisfies neither fully. There were even walkouts during its Cannes premiere, proof that not everyone was willing to recalibrate expectations.

Still, to dismiss the film as lifeless would be to overlook its quiet achievements. Hermanus has never been a director of easy sentiment; his Moffie and Living proved his gift for restraint and compassion. Here, he extends that ethos into a film about the impossibility of preserving happiness, about the ways we record and lose our histories—musical, personal, emotional. Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor give performances of delicacy, their silences as telling as their words, and Chris Cooper delivers a late-career jewel. The folk songs, at once fragile and immortal, become the true center of the film, vessels for emotions too dangerous to voice in their time.

The History of Sound is less about love lived than love remembered, less about fire than about echo. It may not roar like Brokeback Mountain, but in its muted way it hums with melancholy, with the knowledge that some connections define a life even when they cannot last. For those willing to attune to its quiet frequency, it is a haunting, elegiac piece—a ballad of what slips through our fingers, yet remains, forever, in the sound.

The History Of Sound
Directed by Oliver Hermanus
Written by Ben Shattuck
Based on The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck
Produced by Sara Murphy, Andrew Kortschak, Lisa Ciuffetti, Thérèsa Ryan-Van Graan, Oliver Hermanus, Zhang Xin
Starring  Paul Mescal, Josh O'Connor, Chris Cooper
Cinematography : Alexander Dynan
Edited by Chris Wyatt
Production companies : Film4, Closer Media, Tango Entertainment, Storm City Films, End Cue, Fat City
Distributed by Mubi (United States and Canada), Focus Features, Universal Pictures International France (France)
Release dates : May 21, 2025 (Cannes), September 12, 2025 (United States), February 25, 2026 (France)
Running time ! 127 minutes

Seen on September 7 2025 at the Deauville International Center

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