The History Of Sound (2025)

Earlier this year we watched the trailer for Oliver Hermanus’ adaption of Ben Shattuck’s short story, The History of Sound. After watching it, I commented that the trailer made the film look pretty boring. Well, having just watched the film, I must say, I wasn’t far off.

The History of Sound follows Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal) as his talent with music takes him to Boston where he meets fellow musician David White (Josh O’Connor). The two quickly form a close relationship (both professional and personal), connected by their mutual love of music and folk songs. Set at the beginning of World War I, David is drafted and Lionel left to return to his family farm in Kentucky. The two are reconnected in Maine when David asks Lionel to join him on a project to find and record different regional folk songs from across America. The two continue to grow closer until life and duty get in their way (as it usually does in these types of movies).

The story is beautifully told and is at its best when the two musicians are recording the folk songs of various communities on their project. There is also some great direction but at times the movie was quite dull and almost too slow-paced. The movie was almost done in segments during their song collecting mission with it just being shots of them walking through the countryside and stopping in on random people to record them singing songs. The songs are nice, but I felt it would’ve been more impactful if the songs had sounded a lot different, rather than all sounding like the same type of folk. Is that older white lady really singing the same style of folk music as that former slave they meet? I find that a little hard to believe.

Paul Mescal gives a great performance. He manages to portray a great depth of emotion while remaining subtle and controlled and internalising a lot of the true emotions that his character is unable to show. Josh O’Connor plays a great supporting role to Mescal as more of the brash salesman to Mescal’s quiet artist type. The two have great chemistry throughout the film, which is a must considering that their portrayals carry the story.

For me, the dialogue wasn’t the best. It shifted between characters saying the most obvious statements, to characters not saying much at all, to then some being overly poetic when narrating parts of the story.

It’s hard to talk about the ending of the film without spoiling much, but it is done very well and ties up the film well as a love letter to folk music and how the stories told in those songs connect people through their simple beauty and it is ably acted by Chris Cooper as an older Lionel.

Overall, Mescal’s performance and the music are the highlights of the film and, while it isn’t an overall triumph, it was worth crawling through the slow paced parts to get to a nice ending that wraps the film’s story well.