Does ‘The History of Sound’ soar or hit the wrong notes? Critics are divided
Is The History of Sound a "cinematic romance for the ages" or "Brokeback Mountain on sedatives"?
Depends on who you ask. Oliver Hermanus' drama — which follows the years-long romance between two music lovers played by Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor — divided critics when it debuted in Cannes. The film went on to screen at Telluride, and opens this weekend in theaters with mixed reviews (70 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, 62 on Metacritic).
That leaves its Oscar chances a bit up in the air as well — both actors have competing projects (Mescal stars in Hamnet, where his odds are far better; ditto O'Connor for Mastermind and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery). The film's strongest hope is in adapted screenplay, though it's at a distant No. 18 in our odds; Ben Shattuck expanded the premise from his own short story.
Best Adapted Screenplay
What divided the critics is the film's admittedly languid pace; the romance between the two men begins when they first meet at school in New England in 1917, then get separated by the first World War. They reunite on a mission to collect folk music in Maine, where their romance blossoms once again.
Among the film's champions, Time critic Stephanie Zacharek included it on her list of the best movies from the Cannes festival. "The performances are remarkable, particularly Mescal’s — just to watch him listening is galvanizing," she writes. "The History of Sound has the polished texture of the 'Oscar movies' we used to get in the 1990s and early 2000s; it’s perhaps more gentle than it is groundbreaking. But its landscape of longing and loneliness, mapped song by song, has a misty, welcoming beauty."
The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney endorsed it as well, calling it "one of the most unabashedly romantic LGBTQ films in recent memory," and praising Mescal's performance as his best since Aftersun. "One of the loveliest things about this film compared to most queer period pieces is the absence of uncertainty and, mostly, shame. It’s not about the repression of the time or the fear of exposure, even if conventional expectations do weigh on one of the men later in the story. It’s about an instantaneous and enduring connection, anchored as much in music as in sexual attraction or romantic love."
But the comparisons to Ang Lee's masterpiece Brokeback Mountain are inevitable, for which Variety's Owen Gleiberman found it sorely lacking. "The History of Sound, which might be described as a minimalist Masterpiece Theatre-on-the-frontier riff on Brokeback, is a drama that mostly just sits there. It’s far from incompetent, but it’s listless and spiritually inexpressive. It’s Brokeback Mountain on sedatives."
“The History of Sound is a lyrical meditation on fleeting first love and the questions that can follow and haunt for a lifetime," agrees the Associated Press' Lindsay Bahr. "It requires definite patience from its audience that it doesn’t necessarily earn just by existing."
And then there's Natalia Winkleman in The New York Times: "The History of Sound doesn’t trust its own gentleness, and the inertia of the filmmaking gives the whole affair a detached, try-hard feeling. It’s clear that the men’s dalliance is bound for the executioner — if only the march there was less of a slog."
