The History of Sound – first-look review | Little White Lies

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The His­to­ry of Sound – first-look review

22 May 2025

Words by Hannah Strong

A man with dark hair and a pained expression on his face, his upper body visible against a mottled green and grey background.
A man with dark hair and a pained expression on his face, his upper body visible against a mottled green and grey background.
Two musi­cians set out to record the folk songs of rur­al Amer­i­ca in Oliv­er Her­manus’ restrained but affect­ing drama.

When Lionel Wor­thing (Paul Mescal) and David White (Josh O’Connor) meet over the top of a piano in a Boston col­lege bar, the spark between them is instant. One is a tal­ent­ed vocal stu­dent, the oth­er a com­po­si­tion major pre­oc­cu­pied with record­ing and cat­a­logu­ing the folk music of rur­al com­mu­ni­ties – their shared pas­sion for song is what brings them into each other’s orbit, and the onset of the First World War is what cru­el­ly divides them for the first time. While David goes off to fight, Lionel returns to his family’s farm in Ken­tucky, where the work is hard and hon­est. By the time they meet again, they’re both a lit­tle worse for wear. A sojourn to rur­al Maine to con­tin­ue David’s folk record­ing project pro­vides both with a new sense of pur­pose, and rekin­dles their ten­ta­tive romance, but like all great bal­lads, there’s tragedy on the horizon.

Oliv­er Her­manus’ sixth fea­ture takes him to North Amer­i­ca for the first time, cast­ing two bona fide heart­throbs: Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor. When The His­to­ry of Sound was announced in 2021 it set the inter­net ablaze, with many excit­ed about the prospect of a ten­der gay romance star­ring two of the hottest young actors in the indus­try – but the result­ing film is per­haps more restrained and del­i­cate, spar­ing in its sex­u­al con­tent, for bet­ter or worse. In fact, there’s some­thing even a lit­tle dis­tant about the film, in which Lionel and David’s romance amounts to a few months across sev­er­al years, and much of the focus is on its after­math. The film is more con­cerned with how this piv­otal moment in Lionel’s life changed every­thing about the per­son he would become.

Josh O’Connor, seem­ing­ly inca­pable of deliv­er­ing a bad per­for­mance, is won­der­ful and trag­ic as David, charis­mat­ic and glib and fan­tas­ti­cal­ly hand­some. Who wouldn’t fall in love with him, or the way his tired smile nev­er seems to reach his eyes? It’s a pity there isn’t more of him, and Mescal oppo­site is per­haps a lit­tle lost as Lionel, despite his best efforts to deliv­er a ser­vice­able Amer­i­can accent and the charm­ing chem­istry between them. There’s just some­thing a lit­tle too inte­ri­or about his per­for­mance – it’s dif­fi­cult to buy that his rela­tion­ship with David real­ly is as sig­nif­i­cant as the film wants us to believe it is. It’s also a lit­tle unfor­tu­nate for Mescal that he’s out­per­formed by Chris Coop­er as an old­er ver­sion of Lionel; he deliv­ers a sear­ing emo­tion­al mono­logue in the film’s final act which pro­vides some much-need­ed res­o­nance. But to Mescal’s cred­it, his singing sequences are quite beau­ti­ful, as are O’Connor’s, and the folk sound­track evokes Inside Llewyn Davis in its soulfulness.

The film feels weighed down by some unnec­es­sary sequences that don’t help to dri­ve the sto­ry for­ward, occa­sion­al­ly for­get­ting that the crux of the film should be Lionel and David’s rela­tion­ship and its long shad­ow; a sharp­er cut might pre­vent the film from sag­ging once the lovers part ways. While com­par­isons with Broke­back Moun­tain are inevitable among those with a lim­it­ed under­stand­ing of queer cin­e­ma, The His­to­ry of Sound has far more in com­mon with Mer­chant Ivory – par­tic­u­lar­ly The Remains of the Day and Mau­rice – in its per­va­sive melan­choly and sense of pro­found regret at past iner­tia. It’s not repres­sion that pow­ers The His­to­ry of Sound, but the tragedy of under­stand­ing some­thing far too late to chase it. Its but­toned-up nature and chaste­ness might frus­trate those hop­ing for a more sala­cious sto­ry, but Her­manus and writer Ben Shatuck (adapt­ing from his own short sto­ry of the same name) have pro­duced a unique and mov­ing romance for those will­ing to listen.

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