Dir: Oliver Hermanus | Drama 2025 127′
The History of Sound is a slow-burning gay love story about two men who make country music with a focus on singing and recording in the early 1920s Kentucky.
With its sober look and drab colour palette this latest drama from Oliver Hermanus (Moffie) feels conventional and often laborious but with its attention to detail and thoughtful performances from two of contemporary cinema’s top stars it will certainly do well in the box office and appeal to a niche audience who appreciate the tentative unfolding of a missed opportunity involving misinterpreted feelings.
Kentucky, Rome, Boston and eventually Oxford and the Lake District lend a calm and contemplative canvas for this South African director to paint his nuanced portrait of gay love. Paul Mescal plays Lionel, a decent Kentucky country boy who grew up on a farm and has few ambitions and little to offer the world apart from a singing voice with perfect pitch which will eventually take him to the Boston conservatory with apparent ease.
Despite his humble background Lionel manages to be surprisingly dapper and well-turned out in every immaculately staged scene. Quiet and deliberate he is certainly no tortured artist striving to succeed. But what he does yearn for is a closer relationship with another, more confident, singer called David (Josh O’Connor) who he meets along the way. Of course it takes him time to realise all this and by the time he does the world has moved on.
Through their shared love of music Lionel and David develop a close bond of friendship that eventually turns sexual but David remains a sketchy, enigmatic character, even when we discover more about him at the end. All this latent sense of feeling between the two men is never fully developed merely suggested in a brief scene in bed and Lionel’s wanton glances in a railway station but that subtlety is probably the film’s most valuable takeaway along with the elegantly framed settings – unless of course you have an interest in the development of early 20th century sound recording. @MeredithTaylor
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