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Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The History of Sound' Review: Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor Bring Aching Poignancy to Restrained but Heartfelt Queer Love Story
Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor offer more proof that they are among the best contemporary actors we have in The History of Sound, a resonant account of a tender but too-fleeting gay love affair interrupted by World War I. Adapted by Ben Shattuck from his jewel-like short story of the same name, the film's romance and heartache are intensified by the intimate experience the two men share of traveling the backwoods of Maine in 1919, collecting traditional folk tunes and ballads from rural people, essentially the equivalent in music of an oral history. South African director Oliver Hermanus had a breakthrough in 2019 with Moffie, a searing indictment of institutionalized homophobia in the Apartheid-era military. He switched gears from the visceral physical and psychological violence of that film to a more subdued approach three years later with Living, a delicate adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's 1952 classic Ikiru, scripted by Kazuo Ishiguro and led by Bill Nighy as a London bureaucrat diagnosed with terminal cancer, trying to make his remaining days meaningful. More from The Hollywood Reporter Paul Mescal Seduces Cannes With Gay Romance 'The History of Sound' 'Fuori' Review: A Writer's Wild Life Gets Tame Treatment in a Serviceable Italian Biopic Cannes: Neon Picks Up Wagner Moura's 'The Secret Agent' Political Thriller A similar restraint governs Hermanus' new film, which yields its rewards in an unhurried fashion but finds quiet power in understatement, its passion and yearning revealed in the eyes of its superb lead actors. The director is working very much in a classical vein, collaborating with cinematographer Alexander Dynan to view the drama through a painterly lens, with an elegant sense of composition and spatial dynamics and images that look frequently like they could have been ripped right out of an Andrew Wyeth painting. The movie for many will be challengingly paced, as indicated by some walkouts during its first Cannes press screening. Comparisons with Brokeback Mountain seem inevitable, and Ang Lee's beloved 2005 romantic tragedy remains in a class of its own. But if you tap into The History of Sound's soulful undercurrents, the soaring spiritual dimensions of the music — in songs more often about people than Divinity — and the depth of feeling in Mescal and O'Connor's performances, this is a film of lingering melancholic beauty. The power of the music alone makes it one of the most unabashedly romantic LGBTQ films in recent memory. Mescal plays Lionel, a Kentucky farm boy who shares in opening voiceover narration that he can 'see' music. He can identify the exact note of his mother's morning cough, a dog's bark or a frog's croak, and even tell the shape, color and taste of music. Impressed with his vocal skills, a schoolteacher helps him land a scholarship to the New England Conservatory in Boston. Lionel is at a local bar there with friends one night when he recognizes a folk song his father (Raphael Sbarge) used to sing, coming from the piano. He introduces himself to the pianist, David (O'Connor), asking how someone in Boston comes to know an obscure Kentucky tune. David says traveling and collecting songs in the summers is his hobby. Born in Newport and sent to London to live with an uncle after losing his parents, David is a more sophisticated type than Lionel, but they hit it off. Lionel names several songs from his background before he lands on one David has never heard. But when he sings 'Silver Dagger,' a gorgeous traditional in which a mother warns her daughter of the wickedness of men, David is enchanted. From that first encounter, Shattuck's screenplay establishes their shared passion for folk songs and story ballads, a form that might be a poetic fit for the romance that develops between them. David takes the lead at first, not asking but telling Lionel to walk him home after they shut down the bar and then inviting him up for a glass of water. O'Connor makes David witty, playful and not at all shy, spitting out a mouthful of water that the bewitched Lionel catches on his tongue, even before mutual desire has been acknowledged. 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. When David is drafted in 1917 to fight in World War I, Lionel, excluded from the draft because of poor eyesight, is devastated, telling him: 'Write. Send chocolate. Don't die.' With classes at the conservatory shut down because of the war, Lionel returns to Kentucky, his unhappiness quickly detected by his hard-bitten mother (Molly Price). In a dryly amusing barb, she tells him he should never have gone to Boston in the first place, then he wouldn't have minded coming back. He hears nothing from David until two years later when a letter arrives. David has taken a position in the music department of a regional Maine college, where senior faculty have asked him to spend the winter traveling off the beaten path through the state to record the songs of ordinary people. 'How about a long walk in the winter?' he writes. It's not so much a question as a summons, but to Lionel it's an invitation engraved in gold. Those months they spend going from place to place on foot are observed with a kind of quiet rapture. Lionel learns to operate the phonograph, recording the songs on wax cylinders, while Paul takes down the lyrics and any information about the song's origins. This yields some lovely encounters. One woman eyes the machine warily as if it's a surgical instrument, asking 'Will I feel something?' before launching into a beautiful traditional song, with her young daughters providing the sweetest harmonies. 'My grandfather once said that happiness is not a story, so there wasn't much to say about those first weeks,' notes Lionel in voiceover. The factors that might intrude on any queer love affair in the early 20th century all but evaporate under the cover of wilderness, and even the harsh conditions of a Maine winter seem inconsequential when the two men are entwined in the tent, asleep. One significant embellishment to Shattuck's short story is a detour to Malaga Island, where the state governor is making plans to evict an interracial community of former slaves and poor immigrants. A Black woman who goes by Thankful Mary Swain (Briana Middleton) lends her heavenly voice to 'Here in the Vineyard,' a song of praise so transporting that Lionel is moved to join in. Heading back to the mainland while knowing the violent uprooting of the island people that's to come, the lovers have their first disagreement, with Lionel saying they should have stayed and David insisting there was nothing they could have done. That difference of opinion alters something between them. David asks, 'Do you ever worry about this? What we're doing?' Lionel replies simply, 'No, I don't worry.' The reliably wonderful O'Connor is especially good in these scenes as David begins the detachment process by suggesting Lionel go to Boston and teach or travel to Europe and make a living as a singer. He quickly nixes the idea of Lionel coming to work with him at the Maine college, claiming it's too provincial to interest him. The fact that Lionel would follow him there for love alone signals a switch in their relationship, where worldly David has become the cautious one and Lionel the one who knows his mind and stays firm. Their separation at Augusta station is wrenching, with David only showing his sorrow when he's alone. The latter sections of the movie meander at times as the narrative stretches beyond Shattuck's story — Lionel joins a prestigious choir in Rome and has a half-hearted fling with a young Venetian (Alessandro Bedetti), whom he dumps for an offer in Oxford, where well-heeled bohemian Clarissa (Emma Canning) makes the mistake of thinking their relationship will lead to marriage. What keeps the movie transfixing is Lionel's poignant recollections of moments with David, fragments of conversation that play in his mind. In what might be his best performance since Aftersun, Mescal's eyes reveal the accumulation of sorrow, the creeping realization that he will never again be as happy as he was those weeks in Maine. The ending is somewhat protracted, but it's worth the wait to see national treasure Chris Cooper turn up as Lionel in 1980, by that time a respected ethno-musicologist. A televised interview about his newly published history of folk music catches the attention of someone who sends him a gift that's been gathering dust in her attic. The scene that follows, in which the past comes flooding back to Lionel as he sits at the piano, has a depth of feeling that's almost overwhelming. Hermanus again shows highly polished craftsmanship, adding the subtlest hint of sepia tones to evoke the period in the early sections, but never to the point where the characters compete with the settings. His direction of the actors is exemplary, even with characters seen only briefly, like Lionel's parents or the humble backwoods folks who share their songs. Woven into an affecting, predominantly string score by Oliver Coates, the music interludes are without exception sublime, including those sung tunefully but with more gusto than vocal skill by O'Connor and those invested with full-throated feeling by Mescal. They range from expressions of sorrow or love, murder ballads or even something as delightfully morbid as 'The Unquiet Grave,' in which a dead woman laments her true love's constant presence at her headstone, disturbing her rest. The echo of that song in the ballad of David and Lionel is both sweet and shattering. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The History of Sound' Review: Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor Make Love and Music in Oliver Hermanus' Affecting Wartime Romance
The false notes are rare in director Oliver Hermanus' affecting and dustily textured romance 'The History of Sound,' written by Ben Shattuck from his own short story about men in love, together and apart, circa World War I and its aftermath. But for a queer love story starring two of the hottest, of-this-moment leading actors around — Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor — 'The History of Sound' almost perversely denies your expectations of what a gay romance could be. The grandiose, sweeping emotional gestures toward repression and latent desire out of something like 'Brokeback Mountain' are nowhere here, Hermanus instead following the lonesome Lionel (Mescal) around America's hidden corners and eventually into Europe for much of this melancholy mood movie. More from IndieWire All 8 'Mission: Impossible' Movies, Ranked Worst to Best Neon's Tom Quinn Reveals His Oscar-Whisperer Secrets Ahead of the Cannes Awards Mescal and O'Connor play Boston Conservatory music students who meet in 1917, spend winding but limited bouts of time with one another over the years, and on the way to the film's rueful conclusion. While 'The History of Sound' suffers from some pacing issues and detours that turn up as dead ends, following Lionel's path as a budding ethnomusicologist collecting songs and sounds to record on cylinders, this is a lovely movie capable of wounding and haunting you. It's also a vivid big-screen showcase for Mescal. The Irish 'Normal People' breakout and 'Aftersun' Best Actor Oscar nominee seizes the opportunity for understated emotions that are a far cry from the swords and sandals of his most recent film and franchise debut, 'Gladiator II.' 'My father said it was a gift from God that I could see music,' says the older Lionel, played by a wistful Chris Cooper in 1980. 'My father would play B minor, and my mouth would turn bitter.' Lionel is revealed to possess a kind of Nabokovian synesthesia that transforms his ear for sound and music into a kaleidoscope of feeling and mental process. We meet a very young Lionel in Kentucky in 1910 before we're transported to Boston in 1917, where Lionel's life course alters when he approaches David (O'Connor), who's riffing on piano in a smoky bar. They go to bed together in one of the film's demure nods at sex — I wouldn't call any of the lovemaking onscreen in 'History of Sound' sex scenes per se, besides one scene involving Lionel's later relationship with a woman (Emma Canning). 'The History of Sound' never comes out and says, 'These men are gay!,' nor does it strain to depict self-inflicted and necessary repressions of queer men at the time. Though that's not to say that Hermanus' film — closer in tone to the South African director's 2019 portrait of apartheid-era pining, 'Moffie,' than his 2022 looking-back-on-your-life Oscar bid 'Living' — isn't about queer suffering. The draft threatens Lionel and David's taciturn romance, while Shattuck's script hinges more on gestures and exchanges than literal declarations of feeling, and both the traumas of war and existential uncertainty about his sexuality and desires eventually plague David. More than, perhaps, they do Lionel. 'I don't worry,' Lionel says at one point. 'I admire you,' David responds. The two men eventually embark on an impromptu journey through the backwoods of Maine to collect American heritage songs sung by the local people, a kind of self-enterprised academic assignment whose aims and goals they aren't sure of just yet. But it gives Lionel and David time to spend together, in each other's arms naked in a tent, over a handful of nights and weeks, away from the rest of the world. 'The History of Sound' is careful not to reveal too early or too explicitly how much David and Lionel are feeling for each other, though a trepidated departure at a train station tells you what you need to know: 'See you next summer?' 'Sure.' Lionel shakes in David's farewell embrace over what could be the last time they see each other. At least for a while. These are the moments when the enormously talented Mescal as Lionel, withdrawn but never holding back, pierces the screen. Shattuck's script and story more intimately follow Lionel on his own expedition into a sentimental education. In later years an established music teacher, he appears to have had some kind of fraught relationship or hook-up situation with a European protégé while teaching in shimmery, summery Italy, though the closest he's able to get to anyone other than David is his girlfriend Clarissa (Canning, in a short but sharp performance), a musician who wants Lionel to meet her parents. Clarissa's mother warns her to leave him, as Lionel seems to radiate only sadness and a secret within, David probably never not on his mind over the years. (Cinematographer Alexander Dynan gorgeously captures Lionel's chapter in Europe with all the glimmery tactile feel of a Luca Guadagnino movie, where moments trudging through the American middle-of-nowhere adopt a more muted palette.) O'Connor gets less of a recognizable emotional arc to work with, though that's because 'The History of Sound' only shows us David through Lionel's eyes, his memories, the rare and tremulous moments of togetherness they have. Composer Oliver Coates, who coincidentally also provided the ethereal, regret-twinged music for 'Aftersun,' writes an original folk score for this film that stands on its own, with Mescal also doing his own singing and evoking a Kentucky accent that's both boyishly earnest and tentatively coy. Not all of 'The History of Sound's' second half lands with the same emotional assuredness of the first, as Lionel's path wends and expands even while ever looking back at David as the one he couldn't contain in his grasp. That's partially due to outside social forces that demand their love be kept private, behind closed doors or the canvases of a tent, but Hermanus and Shattuck aren't interested in piling on that context, which has already been explored in so many other movies more directly. And I speak on behalf of queer audience members such as myself when I say we are, at this point, over it anyway as a storytelling cue. 'The History of Sound' is as plaintive and lilting as a piano note in minor key, never wallowing in its own misery but still keen to explore the psychic sensations, afterglow, and wreckage of a meaningful connection. If the film lacks heat, that's because Hermanus is committed to making what is decidedly not a Big Gay Sweeping Romance. The emotions flood and hit hard, though, in a final chapter in which Lionel encounters David's eventual wife Belle (Hadley Robinson, who gives a stirring monologue), who is restless and desperate for company and hopes Lionel will stay for just a little bit longer. There's a shot of a cigarette left to burn on its own in an empty kitchen that epitomizes Hermanus' patient gaze, never in a rush to move things (such as things like the course of love) along for the sake of narrative momentum. When the grown-into-old-age Lionel (Cooper) says he was 'never happier than when collecting songs,' what he means is he was never happier than during the times he spent with David. He just can't come out and say that, forced to live in a closet that 'History of Sound' never identifies or addresses, and the film is better for it. The soundtrack takes a bracing hairpin turn when Joy Division's post-punk epic ballad 'Atmosphere' jolts in, a shocking clash against the folk songs prior, songs that almost evoke Arthur Russell, the sound of a man alone in the woods with his thoughts, ruminating over his desires, where it all went wrong or was left unsaid. 'Don't walk away in silence,' Joy Division's Ian Curtis sings. Lionel eventually does walk away in silence, but he's haunted by the sounds and impressions of a romance that was anything but. 'The History of Sound' premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. MUBI releases the film later this year. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
X-rated BDSM film starring Harry Potter actor edited down due to extreme sex scenes and nudity
One of the most critically-acclaimed movies to screen at Cannes this year has been edited down due to its graphic nature. Pillion, which stars Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling, 36, who played Dudley Dursley, is a gay BDSM-themed romance from first-time feature writer-director Harry Lighton. The movie received an eight-minute standing ovation, but Lighton admits that the version screened at the iconic film festival had been edited down significantly due to its graphic sex scenes. 'It was purely because I didn't want to push the audience into feeling they were being deliberately shocked by an image,' he explained to Variety. 'So for example, there was one close up of a d**k, a hard d**k … like down the barrel of the lens. And after watching the film on that "f**k-off" screen I thought, yeah, cutting it was probably the right decision!' Skarsgard chimed in, 'There's definitely a raunchier version of this movie … what you've seen is the family friendly version… there's also the Alexander Skarsgard cut.' Lighton admits that Pillion may need to undergo even more edits to ensure that it can get a US release. The film explores the BDSM relationship between a gay biker and a parking attendant - with the project earning rapturous applause at the premiere. A synopsis reads: 'Colin, a timid man, meets Ray, a confident biker gang leader, who initiates him into a submissive relationship, challenging Colin's mundane existence and prompting personal growth through their unconventional dynamic.' Before the screening, director Lighton said he wanted the film 'to make you laugh, make you think, make you feel and make you horny.' The film features explicit sex scenes and kinky BDSM costumes but Cannes audiences were still lapping it up. Melling stars as shy Colin, whose humdrum life in the suburbs is blown apart when he meets Skarsgard's character Ray. Ray strikes up a sexual relationship with Colin and integrates him into his queer biker milieu, injecting his life with a fresh dose of excitement and mystique. However Colin eventually starts to feel stifled by the fact that he always has to occupy the submissive role in his dynamic with Ray. Skarsgard has spoken freely in the past about how comfortable he is playing nude scenes, quipping to uInterview: 'I'm Scandinavian, godda***it! We love to be naked.' The Swedish hunk is also no stranger to gay sex scenes, thanks to his star-making turn on the vampire show True Blood. One of the scenes was with heterosexual actor Theo Alexander, whose anxiety Alexander had to help assuage before they shot the sequence. 'He's also a straight guy and he was nervous; he had never kissed a guy before,' Alexander explained in an interview with PrideSource. He said to Theo, 'Look at the scene. It's this nemesis and he comes in and then it gets seductive and you think they're gonna make love and it gets into that and then suddenly my character stabs him in the back and he explodes.' The actor added, 'In two minutes, look at this emotional rollercoaster we're taking the audience on. If we commit to this, it's going to be an amazing scene and we're going to be very happy with it forever. If we hold back, that's when it gets awkward.' Skarsgard is himself heterosexual and is in a long-term relationship with Swedish actress Tuva Novotny, with whom he welcomed a baby in 2022.
Telegraph
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Paul Mescal: Comparing my film to Brokeback Mountain is lazy
has said that comparisons drawn between his new gay romance film and Brokeback Mountain are 'lazy'. The 29-year-old Irish actor labelled comparisons of The History of Sound to the 2005 Oscar-winning Western romance starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as 'frustrating', adding that the only thing in common is 'time in a tent'. Speaking at a press conference at Cannes film festival, the Gladiator II actor said: 'I personally don't see the parallels at all with Brokeback Mountain, other than we spent a little time in a tent. '[Brokeback] is a beautiful film but it is dealing with the idea of repression… I find those comparisons relatively lazy and frustrating.' Mescal added: 'But for the most part I think the relationship I have to the film is born out of the fact that it's a celebration between these men's love and not the repression of their sexuality.' The History of Sound follows the relationship between Lionel, a Kentucky farm boy played by Mescal, and David, a composition student portrayed by The Crown's Josh O'Connor, in the summer of 1919 as they travel to New England to record the folk music. Directed by Oliver Hermanus, the film is based on the First World War love story of the same name by Ben Shattuck, who adapted it for the silver screen. Comparisons with Brokeback Mountain, which follows the intense romance between two cowboys working on a ranch in 1963, have been made in the film's reviews as both movies are period dramas centring on a same-sex relationship. Masculinity is shifting Mescal said he believed the portrayal of masculinity is changing in Hollywood movies. 'It's ever shifting,' he said. 'I think maybe in cinema we're moving away from the traditional, alpha, leading male characters. 'I don't think the film is defining or attempting to redefine masculinity, I think it is being very subjective to the relationship between Lionel and David.' Mescal described O'Connor as 'one of the easiest persons' to build a connection with. He said: 'Josh has a great gift…the person who the general public sees is very similar to the one that we know and I think that's very difficult for an actor in today's age to do. 'We've known each other for about five years and we were definitely friendly so that foundation of safety and play was there, but that relationship really deepened in the three or four weeks we were filming.' He added that despite the film's heavy subject matter, their set was 'very light and boyish and nonsensical at times'. Mescal was also asked if the film had changed how he looks at romance in his personal life, to which he responded that he was 24 when he first read the script and doesn't think he 'would have been able to play the role in the same way' had he filmed it then. He was 28 when the film was shot last year. 'Love is very complicated,' he said, adding: 'It's a very hard thing to pin down. 'What I found so moving about the screenplay is that it's never really described in words, it's described in actions and things you don't see…That's something I've learnt in my own life, kindness is wildly underrated in romantic relationships and should be celebrated.' The History of Sound received a six-minute standing ovation at Cannes when it premiered on Wednesday night. The film also stars Chris Cooper, Molly Price, Raphael Sbarge, Hadley Robinson, Emma Canning, Briana Middleton and Gary Raymond.
Malay Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
Paul Mescal dismisses ‘Brokeback Mountain' comparisons at Cannes premiere of ‘The History of Sound'
CANNES, May 23 — Irish actor Paul Mescal on Thursday balked at critics comparing the latest film he stars in, a gay romance competing at the Cannes Festival, to Brokeback Mountain. Running in the main competition for the top Palme d'Or prize in Cannes, The History of Sound by South African director Oliver Hermanus stars Mescal and British actor Josh O'Connor as lovers. After meeting as students ahead of the start of the World War I, their characters fall for each other while recording American folk has described the film as 'Brokeback Mountain on sedatives', while The Guardian called it 'a quasi-Brokeback Mountain film whose tone is one of persistent mournful awe at its own sadness'.Ang Lee's 2005 film starred Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and featured a sex scene in a tent.'I personally don't see the parallels at all between Brokeback Mountain other than the fact that we spend a little bit of time in a tent,' Mescal told journalists the day after the film premiered.'It's a celebration of these two men's love,' he added.'I find those comparisons relatively lazy and frustrating,' said the star of Gladiator film's director fact that 'the previous incarnation of something that can be comparable is 20 years ago obviously just shows that there should be more films about the dynamics and the nuances of queer relationships', Hermanus film 'wasn't about the complication of their sexuality — that wasn't the problem between them', he added.'What was going to keep them apart was the assumption that they might have other loves in their life.'It 'was never about we have to have loads of sex scenes and the world needs to (see) Paul and Josh (get) their kit off', he said. — AFP
