23-05-2025
Yes, Paul Mescal can sing in 'The History of Sound'
CANNES, France — If you are not perpetually online, you may have missed a TikTok titled 'Paul Mescal Having Pipes for a Minute Straight.'
Ardent fans already know that Mescal — jovial Irish lad IRL and incredibly talented sad boy from 'Normal People,' 'All of Us Strangers' and 'Aftersun' — can sing. They've circulated 2012 clips of him playing Javert in 'Les Misérables' and the titular role in 'Phantom of the Opera,' both from when he was 16 and in high school. Occasionally, the actor, 29, has posted videos of himself playing piano and singing at home, including a lovely, impressive duet of 'Nothing Arrived' by Irish indie folk group Villagers alongside Mescal's sister, Nell.
He's also been a surprise guest vocalist at a concert of Irish singer Dermot Kennedy, played guitar and sang in a music video for a mostly songless film adaptation of the opera 'Carmen,' and even performed a musical parody of 'Gladiator II' on SNL in 2024 — which may be the first time the public became aware of those pipes. That word, though, hadn't quite gone international, judging from the pleasantly surprised gasps, impressed murmurs and longing sighs that echoed throughout the theater during the premiere of Mescal's singing-infused period epic, 'The History of Sound,' at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday night.
Ever since the film — a quiet, heartbreaking gay romance set in and around World War I — was announced as a Cannes selection, there have been two burning questions: How's the chemistry between its co-stars, Mescal and Josh O'Connor — two of the biggest young actors of the moment? And how's Mescal's singing?
Reviews have been giving shockingly little space to either of these very important topics, so it seemed imperative to dive in.
The sepia-toned film — from South African director Oliver Hermanus ('Moffie,' 'Living'), with a script that Ben Shattuck adapted from his own short story — is told from the perspective of Mescal's Lionel, a farm boy raised on guitar-plucked folk songs in rural Kentucky who has both synesthesia and a voice that lands him at the Boston Conservatory of Music.
At a bar, Lionel overhears a fellow music student, O'Connor's David at the piano playing a song Lionel's father used to sing to him. Soon, David gets the entire bar to quiet down and cajoles the much-shier Lionel into singing a traditional ballad for him, 'Silver Dagger,' which is essentially a mother's warning to her daughter about men. The only sound in the scene is Mescal's absolutely angelic voice, until David, listening intently, starts accompanying him on piano.
Mescal brings a sense of utter joy to Lionel as he sings; this is what he loves more than anything in the world. And you can tell from O'Connor's face that David is mesmerized. It's hard for the audience not to be, too. David immediately begs Lionel to sing him every folk song he knows. That lesson turns into many other joyous nights around the piano, and eventually a night when David asks Lionel to walk him home and the two take their bond to its natural next step.
After being torn apart by war, they embark on a blissful summer together hiking through Maine to 'collect' recordings of American folk songs on wax cylinders. There are long dialogue-free stretches, and even when the men are talking, an economy of words. The end of that summer is perhaps the film's greatest tragedy.
Early reviews of the film and singing have been mixed. The film's tone was too 'listless' for some, and the BBC's Nicholas Barber wrote that 'Mescal's singing never sounds any better than anyone else's in the film.' Still, his many plaintive renditions of American heritage songs — which were stuck in this viewer's head for days — are deeply felt. 'The power of the music alone makes it one of the most unabashedly romantic LGBTQ films in recent memory,' wrote David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter.
Much of the premiere audience had no quibbles, and seemed primed to love anything Mescal did. The two young women sitting next to this reporter were practically shaking with excitement that they'd scored last-minute seats, and sighed deeply every time Mescal let that lovely voice fly. The actor got a 'We love you, Paul!' shouted from the balcony, and a prolonged standing ovation once the movie ended.
Mescal said during Thursday's news conference that he's long been surrounded by the kind of traditional Irish music that influenced so much of the American folk music in the film, 'so it's music that I grew up being familiar with,' he said. (O'Connor couldn't attend the premiere because he's filming Stephen Spielberg's untitled new sci-fi film with Emily Blunt. Rooney accurately describes his charming singing style as 'tuneful' but 'with more gusto than vocal skill.')
This film is, bar none, the most of Mescal's singing his fans will hear yet — at least until he finally gets the Broadway musical he's broadcasted wanting to do.
As for the chemistry question, the actors are overflowing with it. 'Josh is one of the easiest people to build chemistry with,' Mescal said at the news conference. '[Josh] has a great gift [in that] the person the general public sees is very close to the person we know,' Mescal continued. 'That's a very difficult thing for an actor to do in today's age.'
The two men were attached to the film as it developed for four or five years and already came to know each other well. For three or four weeks, they filmed in the woods together, sharing inside jokes and warming up in cars instead of film trailers. On-screen, that gravitational pull is rarely shown with the touching of flesh, but rather through loving, sometimes lustful gazes and dialogue laden with unspoken meaning.
More than a few critics brought up parallels to 'Brokeback Mountain,' Ang Lee's celebrated 2005 story of repression and longing among cowboys. Mescal pushed back on that notion in the news conference: 'I personally don't see the parallels to 'Brokeback Mountain,' other than we spend a little bit of time in a tent, but to each their own.'
He added, 'To be honest, I find those comparisons relatively lazy and frustrating. For the most part, I think that the relationship that I have to the film is born out of the fact that it's a celebration of these two men's love, not a film about their repressed relationship with their sexuality.'
Mubi bought the film out of Cannes and will be bringing it to North America sometime this year. The exact release date is unknown, but it will surely be accompanied by new TikToks of Mescal having pipes, and rightly so.
