I’m someone who enjoys capturing memories – from taking photos with friends and uploading to social media, through to posting golf highlights of talented amateurs on YouTube.  They’re moments in time which can be fondly looked back on, hopefully, for decades to come.  It’s a luxury afforded to recent generations as prior to the 19^th Century, there was no way of capturing images, sound or video.

The History of Sound is a work of fiction, based on a book authored by Ben Shattack who also wrote the film’s screenplay, but it’s centred on a specific time in history.  It begins in 1917 where two young men, Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), meet at a piano bar in Boston and become romantically entwined.  Not long after, the pair go on a hiking trip across Maine as part of a college research project.  Their task is to meet an assortment of music-loving people and capture them signing folk songs using a revolutionary recording device.  Their beautiful voices would, in a small way, be captured in the annals of history.

Directed by Oliver Hermanus (Living), The History of Sound provides insight into the start of a new technology but it’s also a Brokeback Mountain-style love story.  Lionel and David weren’t largely open about their sexuality and while they shared beautiful, heartfelt moments together, they did so in a way that wasn’t visible to family and friends.  Their research trip across Maine, where they’d sleep each night in a small tent, provided the perfect “cover” given the work and sheltered landscape.

I enjoyed the opening act but felt the film ran out of energy in the later stages.  It ends on a weird, convoluted note involving a character played by Oscar winner Chris Cooper (Adaptation) and, for use a better term, the world’s first recorded voice mail message.  Paul Mescal (Aftersun) and Josh O’Connor (God’s Own Country) portray their introverted roles with the right balance of kindness and apprehension.  They’re nice performances but once their respective characters become separated in the film’s second half, we lose their engagement and the narrative is less interesting.

Chosen to screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival back in May, The History of Sound is worth a look-see but the emotional resonance could have been stronger.