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In Oliver Hermanus’s new film, “The History of Sound,” two young men at the New England Conservatory of Music meet in a bar, when one of them (Josh O’Connor) plays a folk song the other (Paul Mescal) instantly recognizes. The two fall into bed, and then love, almost at once—but World War I soon intervenes, sending one to the front and the other back to the countryside where he was born. Queer love and romance are not new themes for Hermanus, whose other projects include “Mary & George” (in which Julianne Moore plays a countess who uses her son’s beauty to seduce King James I

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