In many ways, the end of the Cannes Film Festival was all about Josh O’Connor. The actor, whose sheepish charm made him the hottest thing in 2024 with turns in La Chimera and Challengers, had not one but two films premiere in the waning days of the festival.
It’s proof that O’Connor is booked and busy. So busy in fact that he couldn’t make it to the premiere of the first title, The History of Sound, on Wednesday because he was off shooting the new Steven Spielberg movie instead. He found his way to France for the second, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind.
For fans of O’Connor, the movies in question offer two flavors of him. In The History of Sound, directed by Oliver Hermanus, he plays an ethnomusicologist in early 20th Century America, who falls in love with a preternaturally talented singer played by Paul Mescal.
Of course, the romantic pairing of those two is just bait for the internet to go wild, but the film doesn’t really capitalize on that promise. The History of Sound is a slow, and largely tame affair.
It’s O’Connor, however, who livens up every scene in which he’s featured. He plays David, who Mescal’s Lionel encounters while attending conservatory in Boston in 1917.
Lionel, a country boy from Kentucky, spots David one evening playing a folk song on a pub piano. He’s taken aback, having thought that Northerners didn’t know this music, but David reveals he’s an aficionado, prone to going on song collecting trips to find regional tunes. They bond over the course of the night and David invites Lionel up to his room. He only has one glass for water so they take turns drinking. David spits some into Lionel’s mouth. They go up to the bedroom together. (The camera cuts away.)
Soon, David is called away to fight in World War I and Lionel returns home to his farm. It’s only years later he receives word from his lover again: David wants him to accompany him on a trip through rural America to find more hidden music. Throughout their excursion O’Connor plays David with a verve that ignites everyone in a room, which stands in contrast to Mescal’s reserved Lionel. Even when it becomes clear there is something David is hiding, O’Connor is driven by passion.
It’s a pity then that David ends up disappearing for most of the movie. Now I’m not one to usually complain about watching a lovesick Paul Mescal wandering around in a daze, but without O’Connor’s presence the film itself meanders. Just as David brings joy into Lionel’s life, O’Connor brings joy into the otherwise dreary plot.
The O’Connor vehicle that is much more successful as a cinematic experience is The Mastermind. Reichardt casts O’Connor as James Blaine Mooney, a scruffy father in 1970s suburban Massachusetts. He has a perfectly acceptable middle class life with a wife (Alana Haim), two kids, and overbearing parents who wish he would find stable work. But JB, as he’s known, plans to rob the local art museum of a series of abstract paintings by Arthur Dove. The title is indeed a bit ironic. JB, yes, masterminds this heist, but he’s a pathetic figure that O’Connor plays with downcast eyes and hunched shoulders.
Once he pulls off the job, he has absolutely no idea what to do, and Reichardt contrasts his self-centered ambling with the ongoing protests against the Vietnam War. In a time full of righteous civil disobedience, JB pulls off his stunt simply because he has nothing else to do. If Challengers proved that O’Connor is great at someone who is, put simply, sort of a piece of shit, The Mastermind further capitalizes on his ability to embody men who squander their opportunities.
Both The History of Sound and The Mastermind don’t feel particularly likely to become breakout hits outside of the festival circuit. The History of Sound feels primed to disappoint audiences upon release with its mildness, and The Mastermind, while wonderful, is an acquired taste as most of Reichardt’s exacting films are. But in their own ways they both prove the immense staying power of Josh O’Connor, who is captivating no matter the circumstances.
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