Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Oliver Hermanus
Starring: Paul Mescal, Josh O'Connor, Chris Cooper, Briana Middleton, Hadley Robinson, Emma Canning
One of humanity's greatest achievements was our discovery of how to record sound. Even today, the idea that sound can be captured and played back still seems like the stuff of science fiction. The History of Sound features a beautifully romantic explanation of how sound produces vibrations and can thus be etched onto a physical surface, but it's one of those cases where logic sounds like magic. Sometimes science can be more romantic than romance itself. Oliver Hermanus's film is about a scientific process, and also about a literal romance. But here the science is far more compelling and moving than the actual romance.
Adapted by Ben Shattuck from two of his own short stories, The History of Sound is a fictional account of two men who fall in love while recording folk songs in Maine in the years just after WWI. In 1917 Lionel (Paul Mescal) leaves rural Kentucky to avail of a scholarship at a Boston conservatoire, his singing voice having garnered much attention. There he meets David (Josh O'Connor), a carefree spirit who is obsessed with collecting folk songs. Lionel introduces David to a few ditties he hasn't yet come across, and David teaches Lionel a few tricks of his own, if you know what I mean.
The romance is interrupted when David is drafted and sent to fight in Europe. Lionel returns to the family farm and toils away for months until he receives a letter from David, who has now returned and wants Lionel to join him on a trip recording folk songs in rural Maine. Much to his ailing mother's chagrin, Lionel drops everything and reunites with David.
As a fan of both American roots music and analog media, I was gripped by this portion of Hermanus's film. There is something beautiful in seeing David and Lionel set up their recording device, which records on wax cylinders, and capturing remarkable voices and songs that might otherwise fade away. The concept of being recorded is so strange to their subjects that Lionel and David might as well be aliens from another world with such advanced technology. Watching Lionel set up his apparatus, one worried old lady asks if she will feel anything, as though Lionel were about to perform surgery, literally cutting the notes out of her throat.
Less compelling is the relationship between Lionel and David. If these men were real life figures you might understand why a film would highlight their romance in an era when such a coupling was taboo. But as a work of fiction there simply isn't enough that's interesting about these two men, other than the fact that they're two men. We never feel any real spark between David and Lionel, whether emotional or merely sexual, and their romance never feels like anything more than a fling. It's difficult to follow the film then in its later portions when the two men are separated and Lionel spends the rest of his screen time moping around and being cruel to subsequent lovers of both sexes. Lionel becomes determined to unearth the cylinders that documented his expedition with David, not because they contain important cultural artefacts but because he wants to be reminded of that winter dalliance. Move on Lionel!
With his sad eyes, Mescal is ideally suited to capturing Lionel's heartbreak, and in the less showy of the two central roles he outshines his co-star, no mean feat given how good an actor O'Connor has proven himself recently. But the facade crumbles whenever Mescal is called upon to sing. Like most trained actors, Mescal can carry a tune, but we never believe his voice is special enough to attract the attention of in order, an American conservatoire, a Roman choir and Oxford University. Mescal is at his best here (and perhaps in general) when he keeps his mouth shut, when he's playing a character who can't or won't express himself verbally. It says something about the weakness of the central romance that Mescal's best scenes involve him interacting with women rather than his male lover. There are two wrenching scenes: one that sees Lionel break up with an Oxford student (Emma Canning) he has tried to convince himself he could love, the other involving a shock revelation delivered by a young woman (Hadley Robinson) whose very existence comes as a body blow to poor old Lionel.
Lionel's voiceover narration is initially delivered not by Mescal but by Chris Cooper as a decades older version of the character. In the film's 1980-set coda, Cooper delivers a moving silent performance as he listens back to a recording made by David all those years ago. In this moment Cooper convinces us that there was something special between these two men, something the rest of the film fails to achieve.
The History of Sound is in UK/ROI cinemas from January 23rd.
