If the algorithm was overseeing casting for a tender, queer romance, it’s likely that at least one combination would involve Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor. They are two of Hollywood’s most promising next generation stars, and, not insignificantly, Internet boyfriends who have captured the popular imagination on and off screen.
The new film The History of Sound does indeed find Mescal and O’Connor in a romantic affair. But it is not remotely the stuff of Normal People meets Challengers fan fiction (thank goodness for that). It’s a silly thing to have to clarify, but posters, loglines, red carpet appearances and wild imaginations can sometimes give audiences a misleading idea about what a movie really is. In this case, The History of Sound is a lyrical meditation on fleeting first love and the questions that can follow and haunt for a lifetime.
Mescal is Lionel, a music prodigy from an impoverished Kentucky farm family whose talent lands him at the Boston Conservatory where, in 1917, he meets David (O’Connor) who happens to be singing a folk song that reminds him of home. It’s a mystical kind of meet-cute, in which all sounds evaporate as Lionel floats over to this magnetic person. David, however, is from a different world than Lionel, the product of a wealthy Newport family stricken by tragedy and death. And yet despite all the losses around, he has an undeniable lightness to him and a charisma that Lionel, and most who meet him, find intoxicating. Despite their ivory tower surroundings, they’re both passionate about folk music. Though prewar America was not exactly a welcoming time for gay men, Lionel and David fall into an easy, intimate relationship, and the movie comes vibrantly, ever so briefly, to life.
Photo: AP
The History of Sound, an adaptation of a short story by Ben Shattuck, was directed by Oliver Hermanus, whose deliberately languorous pacing is admirably restrained but can also veer into tedium. Part of that is surely intentional as it’s a film about Lionel’s longing and searching in the absence of David, who is cruelly (for us and Lionel) gone for a large part of the movie.
The two reunite for a bit, in Maine, on a quest to record folk songs. They wander around, sleep in tents and Lionel is once again in heaven. But David has changed a bit, and most of the important things go frustratingly unsaid. Between the Conservatory and Maine, David served in the war, in the trenches, but can’t quite bring himself to talk meaningfully about it, resorting only to the quips he has always relied on: “It was boring.”
Not long after, they’re separated again, and the camera keeps us stubbornly with Lionel who finds himself in some of the most beautiful places in the world, singing in a choir in Rome, or on a weekend away at his girlfriend’s family’s Downton-esque estate in England. And yet all he yearns for is to be in that tent, in Maine, with David by his side.
Photo: AP
At its core, The History of Sound a memory piece, narrated by Chris Cooper, who plays an older Lionel still trying to make sense of it all. The filmmakers have said it’s about the idea that your first love is your greatest love, which is a thought so unspeakably sad that it seems only fitting for a folk song. Add to that a generation of men destroyed by war, and the repression of the time and it’s enough to make you crumble under the weight of it all.
The film, which runs over two hours, is building to a profound conclusion, a payoff for all the slow-paced and melancholy moments that preceded it. But it requires definite patience from its audience that it doesn’t necessarily earn just by existing. There’s a lot of talk about what makes folk songs great, that they’re the most “warm-blooded pieces of music” and are the songs of real people, not gods. Lionel explains at one point that they are “messy, human experiences,” “emotion in song,” “nothing fancy.”
The History of Sound does not feel like a folk song, however, just the inspiration for one.
The comical bit of parachute journalism by Simon Shuster in the Atlantic last week under the title “Will Taiwan Just Give Up?”, drew much attention for its numerous minor errors, largely forgivable, its total lack of understanding of Taiwan and its history and its strange, pro-China interpretations, including taking Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) seriously. The laughter and indignation that essay generated among Taiwan aficionados is an indicator of how far Western journalism on Taiwan has come. Twenty years ago, it would have been another piece for the pile. Today, it is an obvious outlier. Shuster’s piece was
For a small nation, Taiwan has an unusually long list of territorial disputes. In part or in whole, it has disputes over the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. It also has another territorial dispute with Vietnam over the Paracel Islands, and with Japan over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyutai Islands, 釣魚台). Of course, the biggest territorial disputes are with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which not only claims all of the above, but also Pratas Island (Dongsha, 東沙島), Kinmen, Penghu and all of Taiwan itself. This creates considerable headaches politically for the government, especially
Sept 14 to Sept 20 Hwang Tae-im’s in-laws were among the many Korean families that congregated in Keelung after World War II, hoping to board a ship home. Japanese colonial rule had ended in both Korea and Taiwan, and many Koreans were eager to return to their newly-liberated homeland. Around 3,000 Koreans were recorded living in Taiwan in 1943, with Keelung hosting the largest population at 612. However, only one ship arrived to repatriate civilians, leaving many, including Hwang’s in-laws, stranded in Keelung. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, they gave up going home and settled in Keelung’s
The one-day trip begins at the geographical center of Taiwan: Puli Township’s (埔里) Hutou Mountain Geographic Center of Taiwan Monument (臺灣地理中心碑), embedded at the foot of Nantou County’s dense forested slopes. It sits entrenched in forest vegetation amid the tall, spindly bodies and spiky heads of the betel nut trees; the air is cool, and its surroundings are mostly silent save the sounds of late-season cicadas. Roughly two minutes from the first destination, and after a bend in Yongfeng Road (永豐路), there’s a glimpse of a resplendent golden dome on the horizon. It’s the cap of the 135m-tall main building of the
RSS