In ‘The History of Sound,’ Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor’s Tender Romance Defines a Complex Life

Paul Mescal did not have much time. He was built like a Roman gladiator, but about to jump into life as an introverted music student in New England circa 1916. There would be virtually no break between the two jobs. He started hitting the treadmill for hours a day. Between filming the epic Colosseum scenes and going toe to toe with Denzel Washington, he was getting a crash course in Kentucky dialect and studying old folk songs. “I didn’t have as much time as I would’ve liked to lose as much Gladiator body as possible,” Mescal says. “In those last two weeks of the shoot in Malta, when I was still filming Gladiator II, my trainer saw a lot of ugly sides to my hungry self.”

Normal People, the latter on The Crown. The project floated in limbo. Financing was difficult; the pandemic kept raging; guild strikes shut down the industry for months. All the while, Mescal and O’Connor (who also earned acclaim for last year’s Challengers and La Chimera) were becoming movie stars.

“Their lives were literally changing, and it was always this groupthink situation of, Where can we find the time to force the universe to let us make this film?” says Hermanus—whose last film, the British period piece Living, earned two Oscar nominations. “We probably wouldn’t have been able to make this film when we wanted to, in 2022, because they weren’t the Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor that we now know today.”

So here arrives The History of Sound, a sweeping, wrenching historical drama starring two of the most exciting actors of their generation. (The film premieres this month at the Cannes Film Festival, before Mubi releases it in US theaters later this year.) The timing feels apt for everyone involved, and that spirit infused the making of the film. “How many times do you hear people who really try and get something made over five, 10, 15 years, and it just falls away?” Mescal says. “I remember feeling very lucky. Like, We have to enjoy this. Because we’ll come across other opportunities in our life where we love a script as much as this, and we just don’t get to get it made.”

Adapted by Ben Shattuck from his own short story, The History of Sound examines the seismic impact of a fleeting romantic encounter between Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), two students at the New England Conservatory during World War I. They meet at a piano bar, where Lionel hears David singing a folk song familiar from his youth. He’s swept off his feet, transported back to his childhood—so we’re told in the lyrical narration of an older Lionel, voiced by Chris Cooper—and instantly infatuated. They lock eyes, smile at one another, drink, go home together. They talk about how they grew up and their dreams for what’s next. They set a schedule for how often they can see each other, until life starts getting in the way.

“David is vocal, David has ideas, David is wealthy. And Lionel is kind of just being overwhelmed by this person, but in a very slow-drip way—taking a long time to quantify the impact of this moment in his life and this relationship,” Hermanus says. “That’s just relatable to me, I guess. We all have people who define us, but we don’t realize they defined us until it’s too late.”

In the mold of Americana dramas that were far more common a few decades ago, The History of Sound covers the expanse of a life—with particular, melancholy focus on each moment that Lionel and David share within it. Years after school, they meet at a train station in Portland, Maine, and embark on a trip around the Northeast. They walk dozens of miles and collect folk ballads from different corners of the country. “My grandfather once said that happiness isn’t a story,” Lionel narrates at one point. “So there isn’t much to say about those first weeks.” The effortless, palpably sweet connection between the two men runs contrary to most depictions of queer love in this time period, usually defined by danger and secrecy.

“I’m a gay man. I would love to go to the movies and watch a movie about a same-sex relationship that maybe makes me cry, but feels fulfilling. So much of queer cinema—and I’ve made queer cinema like this—is about the struggles,” says Hermanus, who’s known for brutal queer South African dramas like 2019’s Moffie. “For me, this has always been about wanting it to be accessible to everyone. We’re not going to make a movie about the problematizing of their relationship or their sexuality.”

Following the song-collecting trip, The History of Sound takes surprising, sometimes tragic plot turns. Life goes on. Youth and the love that blossomed around it starts to feel like a bittersweet memory. This is specifically true for Lionel, our main character. “The film definitely has romantic gestures in it—intensely so in some places—but it is fundamentally about Lionel’s life,” Mescal says. “It’s actually important to let audiences know not to come just expecting [romance]. It’s a beautiful section of the film, and it has a lasting impact, but it’s a subjective understanding of Lionel’s experience of that love.”

Mescal first met O’Connor on Zoom during the pandemic, following the release of Normal People. O’Connor reached out; he was a new fan. “We had a sweet Zoom,” Mescal says. “He was one of the first people that I was starstruck by after Normal People came out. He’s now one of my best friends, and I just adore him.” The two had separately gotten attached to The History of Sound over the years with no idea which character they’d play. In fact, Mescal wanted to portray David, not Lionel. “A little bit of me at that point was reticent, if I’m being honest, to lead a film to that extent,” the actor says. But Hermanus had a vision in the middle of the night that Mescal should play the part, and told the actor about it the next day. Mescal took a few weeks away, poring over the screenplay again, before saying yes.

This was before Mescal’s Oscar nomination for Aftersun, or the offer to topline Ridley Scott’s massive Gladiator sequel. The History of Sound felt like a homecoming in some ways—“Gladiator is the anomaly in terms of the genre of films that I’ve played in before,” he says—and O’Connor only aided in that experience. The two radiate an intimate, singular chemistry. “We felt very boyish in each other’s company throughout,” says Mescal. “I’ve always said this to Josh, but he brings out a childlike version of me. I haven’t felt that kind of degree of boyishness in myself for a long time.”

The duo sell a romantic connection that extends well beyond the bedroom. “There is a kind of real sense of companionship, and the joy and loss that comes with the presence and absence of that,” Mescal says. “It’s not just about sex and the intensity of falling in love. It’s deeper than that.”

In fact, there isn’t much sex at all in The History of Sound—though the film carries a romantic sweep beginning to end. “I didn’t want the sex of it to be the transgression, or the big idea, like, ‘Oh, it’s 1917, and these two men are taking the risk of being sexual,’” Hermanus says. “Ben wrote it in a way where there was no hesitation, no moment of fear. For me, the sex scene is when Lionel is walking around David’s apartment the morning after [their first encounter], and he’s smelling everything and sitting everywhere. He’s absorbing the energy of this person.”

One reason Hermanus thought Mescal needed to play Lionel: “Paul loves singing.” While the first musical voice we hear in the film is technically David’s, it’s Paul who is attending the conservatory for voice. He’s also the one who ultimately embarks on a career as a singer. “I get nervous when it’s committed to film and could potentially be or will be there forever,” Mescal admits. “But these are beautiful songs. To get to sing them and have them recorded—they’re not songs that I think tons of people will be overly familiar with, so it’s nice to hopefully introduce some people to that kind of world of music.” He adds that the music was one of his initial ways into the project—he knew these songs well even as he was reading the script.

Shattuck is from Massachusetts, and wrote the short story in part as a love letter to richly emotional folk ballads—the sorts of songs whose origins often go back hundreds of years. One of key songs shared in the film between Lionel and David, “Silver Dagger,” dates back to the early 19th century. “Narrative songs historically tell the stories of love, or love lost, or morals and ethics. They kind of become these oral history subjects,” Hermanus says. The director spent years immersed in them, listening to a Spotify playlist with hundreds of entries, which he later handed to the actors. He was inspired to give the film a shape that echoed that of the music. “The story of History of Sound—as a story itself, as a movie—is in itself one of these songs. It’s the concept of the movie.”

The film team worked closely with composer Oliver Coates (who also worked on Aftersun) and contemporary singer-songwriter Sam Amidon to nail down an unforgettable soundscape. Lionel and David hear the music they study in its original forms from town to town, against Coates’s soaringly emotional score. “It’s not about the beauty of the performance; it’s understanding what you’re singing about more so,” Mescal says. “It was an easy thing for me to submerge myself in.” The balance between performing and watching others perform is precisely where Mescal’s performance comes alive.

“Something that really turns Lionel on creatively is to observe, is to record. And I tried to inform that as much as possible in his physicality,” Mescal says. “He’s got a totally different physical language to that of Gladiator. He’s a voyeur to the world. He does stand up for himself, but to try and play that truthfully requires a level of restraint that I love playing in. But this, I think, is the most extreme version of that that I’ve played.”

The full scope of The History of Sound’s thematic power gradually reveals itself through to the film’s final act. The big scale of Hermanus’s filmmaking snaps into focus, as does the text’s subtle queerness, in what it means to hold onto love that feels so far away. Mescal’s delicate lead performance completes its shape too. “I spent a lot of time on set turning to Oliver, being like, ‘Is this going to read?’ And I think it does in the finished product. But that was something that I was nervous about,” Mescal says. “You’re chartering a life. You’re just trying to let time do the work in the film, and let it percolate through Lionel. For some people, that will be something that interests them. Other people, they might not get it.”

Time comes up a lot when speaking with those involved in The History of Sound. You’ll often hear the phrase “labor of love.” Mescal has never been attached to a project longer in his career. He now thinks back to when he first read the script in his mid-20s, afraid to take on such a big role. “The thing that I’m most proud about,” he says, “is that the feeling I had when I read the script for the first time is what I got when I saw the film for the first time.”

This story is part of Awards Insider’s in-depth Cannes coverage, including first looks and exclusive interviews with some of the event’s biggest names. Stay tuned for more Cannes stories as well as a special full week of Little Gold Men podcast episodes, recorded live from the festival and publishing every day.

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