The History of Sound

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Oliver Hermanus (“Living”) directs the heartfelt period drama “The History of Sound,” loosely based on the legendary musicologist Alan Lomax, who is known for traveling around the Deep South recording folk songs from local little known musicians and singers of the area.

As the film begins, (adapted from two short stories by Ben Shattuck) Kentucky native Lionel (Paul Mescal) travels to The Boston Music Conservatory in 1917 and meets enterprising music student David (Josh O’Connor). After some awkwardness, Lionel accompanies David’s piano with some piercing vocalizations. The two bond over the romantic tune and begin a relationship. Lionel attempts to resume life in the country while David becomes a soldier In World War I.

When he least expects it, Lionel receives a letter, asking him to join David on a country journey through the areas of rural Maine to collect folk songs, a project funded by the university.

David is overjoyed and the two fall deeper in love.

The locales shown are invariably melancholic and toned in gray. Much screen time is spent illustrating Lionel’s bucolic confinement with a harshly demanding mother (Molly Price) who has no interest in music.

The romance between Lionel and David is well sustained but the film could take a lesson in pacing and momentum if not in music.

David drifts apart for reasons that are opaque and ill-defined, but this adds to the haunt and mystery.

Traveling to Italy, Lionel meets the shadowy Sylphlike Clarissa (Emma Canning) who wants to marry him, but Mom is ill. More to the point, he’s just not into her.

David is it.

While the pacing is lackluster, there are some vibrant scenes. A definite highlight is the music itself: full, electric, and charged with evocative mystery. The singing is first rate.

Another highlight is the actor Chris Cooper as an older Lionel Worthing who is both enervated and strangely galvanized by the dualistic circumstances of unrequited love.

This film has a reverence for sound itself: the sounds collected through friendships and creativity and the sounds of lost love and mischance that somehow, even with the best of intentions, drift away into nothingness.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com