Directed By Oliver Hermanus

Starring – Paul Mescal, Josh O’Connor, Chris Cooper

The Plot – Follows two young men, Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), in the shadows of WWI who are determined to record the lives, voices and music of their American countrymen. As they begin to log the events, the two fall in love.

Rated R for some sexuality

THE HISTORY OF SOUND | Official Trailer | Now Playing in Theaters

POSITIVES

After tapping into the exhilarating fearlessness of a man forced to confront his own mortality, in 2022’s “Living”, Oliver Hermanus follows up his awards campaign by untangling the tender web of wallowing between two star-crossed gay lovers constantly brought together by the connective language of music, allowing the film to take on a far more expansive mold than what was initially expected in a story with an abundance of familiarities in the subgenre. On the surface, this could easily make “The History of Sound” feel like one of those uplifting drama’s that vividly evokes saccharine sentiments for the vital importance of love for everyone, but it refreshingly condenses the scope of the story’s framing alongside a World War I narrative, remaining dominantly faithful between its two protagonists, with such an affinity for music that transcends so many devastating aspects taking shape in the world, reminding us not only of the artform feeling like an instrumental scrapbook of feelings and memories that we associate with a song, but also that untouchable instance where time stood still between two people brought together by the commonalities of escapism. Besides this thematic profoundness, the film’s presentation also articulates a seamless teleportation into the early 20th century, featuring meaningful production values in the wardrobe, set design, and cinematography, that coherently fleshes out the authenticity of the intended setting. While each of these aspects flourish ideally towards maintaining an immersive consistency to the integrity of the visuals, without anything that even comes close to sacrificing the sanctity of that enveloping, for my money it’s definitely the collective depth of the wardrobe that effortlessly enlists the single strongest transparency to the integrity of the characters, particularly Lionel’s elevated rags to riches thread count, which corresponds brilliantly with the career driven ambitions that the character seeks out during the movie’s second act, or David’s balance between a wartime uniform appraising remarkable accuracy to what was worn during World War I, and a three-piece suit, which mirrors much of the internalized dual life that the character was portraying. This brings me to my single favorite aspect of the movie, pertaining to the contrasting dynamic between Lionel and David, which conveyed some unforeseen feelings between them that I truly wasn’t expecting in the execution of the film. While Hermanus’ direction is admittedly a bit restrained in totem, it’s this aspect that provided the most alluring opportunistic insight into the dimensions of the characters, with David’s remorseful jealousy towards Lionel illustrating the internalized agony in being forced to portray someone he rightfully isn’t, while Lionel’s adoration of David is occasionally subsided upon by feelings disappointment and neglect, and it vividly conveys so much subjected confrontation between them that makes an already difficult situation decades ahead of LGBTQ being sociologically accepted feel nearly impossible, underlining a tragic aspect to their story that helps to make up for some of the absent drama plaguing this engagement. On the subject of this dynamic, Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor constantly knock it out of the park with their respective performances, despite so much timid reservation on the consistency of their chemistry. Long before either of them unload a single emotion to the film’s appeal, the aforementioned cinematography full of lingering shots and lucidly sleek camera motions help to emphasize the emotional insight into the reservations of the characters, but even when it rests in the hands of these co-stars, they’re equally up to the task, with Mescal’s constricted interiority serving as an anchor for the film’s evolving emotionality, while O’Connor’s effortless charms continuously pushes the narrative forward with dependable charisma in ways that allows the audience to fall in love with David in the same manner that Lionel has, and it generates a palpable connection between two complex characters that takes their periodic excursions miles into the film’s two hour runtime, allowing each actor to flourish with screen-stealing captivity that proves they’re each so much more than just handsome faces.

NEGATIVES

It pains me to express that even in a movie involving such a rich adoration and cemented importance towards music craftsmanship, that “The History of Sound” is an agonizingly dry engagement of little to no dramatic depth in the exploit of its love story, especially with familiarized beats of the storytelling that more than mirrors risks taken by “Brokeback Mountain”, a film over twenty years its senior. This comparison isn’t a premature one, as both were gay love stories produced by Focus Features, in which two men go on a long distance journey to evade everyone who incorrectly sees them as one thing, but even in tackling this film at eye level, the script often takes the conventionalized road that frequently leads to predictability, especially involving one late act revelation meant to shatter the audience into a million pieces, but one that I found evidentially obvious in the way the narration (From Chris Cooper) and the abrupt time shifts forwards casually tiptoed around it, and it just grounds the film’s emotionality from ever truly taking off, an aspect that already makes it inferior to its predecessors on the subject of gay love. If this isn’t enough, the script spends a majority of its time constantly distancing its lovesick protagonists, leading to a lack of physicality and passion permeating pungently between them, and while I can wholeheartedly understand the intention of absence making the heart grow fonder, I can’t say that the individualizing does anything meaningful to the momentum of the couple to allow them to pick up where they previously left off, substituting it with these inconsequential subplots in the navigating of Lionel that aren’t anywhere near as fascinating as those involving the plot-heavy dynamic of Lionel and David, which isn’t as much of the dominating majority on the storytelling as you might expect. On top of this, I didn’t find a lot of experimental chances taken with Hermanus’ bland direction, particularly in the aspect of Lionel’s initialized superpower of sorts, towards being able to see music, which is mentioned heavily during the film’s opening minutes, then never explored or fully realized again. It makes it difficult to relate to the extraordinary talents of a character if the movie is unable to flourish just what makes them special in the first place, but considering a majority of Mescal’s performance feels as emotionally restrictive as Oliver’s direction, it doesn’t help to convey any kind of insight into the experience they’re feeling with the ocular senses of the character, in turn leading to one gigantic missed opportunity that I wish Hermanus would’ve taken advantage of, in order to illicit something uniquely endearing to his trivially familiar outline. On the subject of Mescal’s Lionel, the actor strangely presides onto the scene during an arc that articulates Lionel as being 17-years-old, and no matter how hard I squint or subdue my own overwhelming disbelief towards such a logic, I cannot in good faith see this nearly thirty-year-old actor as an adolescent, even as the production uses the unsubtle tactic of constantly shifting his facial growth, in order to attempt to sell such a remarkable embellishing.

OVERALL
“The History of Sound” is a hauntingly aching, slow-burning story of romantic longing and the universal language of music that casually binds two star-crossed swooning souls back together, time after time. While Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor make beautiful music together as the movie’s protagonist coupling, Oliver Hermanus’ restrictedly cautious direction merely approaches such a fascinating story at eye level, in turn enacting a two hour Oscar checklist that casually plays like a film that you’ve already seen, and that’s because you literally have.

My Grade: 6.7 or C+