The History of Sound Puts Itself on Mute

"The History of Sound, which was directed by Oliver Hermanus and based on a pair of short stories by Ben Shattuck (who also wrote the script), is, like Brokeback, a queer romance starring two of our hottest rising stars. Like Brokeback, it's a film about characters who are forever marked by an Edenic stretch of time together in nature, and whose later experiments with more societally approved paths can't compare to what they had in that interlude."

"It's about lovers who spend far less time together than they do apart, and, even more than the Ang Lee film, it's about longing that's eventually represented in a physical totem. The difference is that The History of Sound is so relentlessly subdued that it treats that longing more as a theme than as an emotion someone might actually feel."

The History of Sound is a 1917-set queer period romance directed by Oliver Hermanus, adapted from two short stories by Ben Shattuck. Lionel Worthing, a Kentucky farm boy with a startling singing gift, earns a place at the New England Conservatory and meets David White, a composition student with an eidetic musical memory. The two bond over reverent folk songs and an Edenic interlude in nature that permanently marks them. The film emphasizes music, memory, and a physical totem of longing, while adopting a restrained tone in which characters discuss music more readily than their inner feelings.

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