The History of Sound (c) MUBI
Film: The History of Sound
In Cinemas on Friday
Ever since the premise and cast of The History of Sound was announced, the inevitable comparison to Brokeback Mountain was soon made. Two respected young (and as far as we know, straight) actors are are playing two men at the start of the 20th century find love as they traverse the rural and unforgiving landscape of America. The two meet as students at the New England Conservatory of Music: Lionel (Paul Mescal), a simple and reserved man raised on a farm in Kentucky (shades of Ennis del Mar), and David (Josh O’Connor), a well-off, more gregarious man from Newport, Rhode Island (the more Jack Twist of the pair). As their love starts to bloom (in secret, of course), war breaks out in Europe and David is drafted, giving us the moment Lionel, at his most demonstrative, tells David: “Write. Send chocolates. Don’t die.” When David comes back and takes a job at a small college in Maine, he convinces Lionel to join him on a project where he goes around the country recording songs and stories on wax cylinders in danger of going extinct with the current generation. They take three months backpacking and travelling the backroads of America, giving the pair, like Ennis and Jack on Brokeback Mountain, the smallest moments of happiness that real life would never afford them.
