Much of The History of Sound is rooted in the old ballad “The Unquiet Grave,” an Irish English folk song in which a young man’s grief is so consuming that he loiters on his love’s grave and unsettles her eternal rest. One lyric, a haunting plea, is repeated in Oliver Hermanus’s latest feature: “Oh, who sits weeping on my grave, and will not let me sleep?” This slow-burning queer love story is a tale steeped in wistful yearning, yet it dwells too much in the rhythms of mourning and moving on.

The History of Sound pairs two of Hollywood’s young heartthrobs—Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor—in this muted romance. The title cards alone are likely to draw crowds to the theaters, garnering comparisons to Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005). But much like Hermanus’s most recent film, Living

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