In Search of Lost Sounds

âm thanh - Ảnh 1. — Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal in the movie "The History of Sound" - Photo: DPCC

Ethnomusicologist Lionel Worthing, played by Paul Mescal in Oliver Hermanus's The History of Sound, nominated for the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, when he was old, was asked by a student why he loved folk music, and explained that it was hot-blooded music.

History of sound

As a student, Lionel attends a music school in Boston. He meets a fellow student named David (Josh O'Connor) who plays folk music in a pub that reminds him of his farm home. Lionel also sings a folk song for David. The two boys instantly fall in love.

World War I broke out, David was drafted into the army, and the two were separated. A few years later, David returned, inviting Lionel to join him on a trip into the countryside, carrying wax cylinders to record the folk songs of peasants who were being pushed to the fringes of modern society.

But then they went their separate ways. When Lionel went to find David, he found out that David had married and committed suicide due to post-war trauma.

The History of Sound - the title means history of sound, a title that has a very grand appearance, as if inviting us to step into a grand narrative. But there is no grand narrative there.

Set in a time when the world was in turmoil, the story told is only the inside story of that history with pieces of songs, pieces of life, pieces of sadness, pieces of love, of people without whom history would not have changed a bit.

They sing not to be famous, not to be heard, they sing as if it is part of their breath.

The history of sound trailer

Lost so much in oblivion

Throughout the film, we hear ordinary people singing about the suffering that always occurs in the small, remote towns. For example, they lament the heartbreak of separation: "Oh, the snow melts quickest when the wind begins to sing, and the corn ripens earliest when the frost has fallen" (The Snow It Melts The Soonest).

They express the heaviness of life: "Oh my soul, let us try for a little while to lay aside our burdens" (Grieved Soul); they sing of their humble status: "In the Lord's vineyard I will live and labor, obedient to God until the hour of my death" (Here In The Vineyard).

What is sound? In one memorable scene, the two main characters explain sound to a country child by telling him to put his hand on his throat, try to hum, and the vibrations his hand feels are the sound.

So music is limited, but sound is infinite.

Every scene and every image that appears in the film seems to be emitting some kind of sound wave, not only contained in the guitars or the singing voices, but also the dry branches in the cold winter, the eggs that the two boys fried for each other on the cliff during their trip, the embers that flew into the air and then suddenly went out in the dark night, even the old lost letters.

Everything vibrates, everything moves, and so it makes sounds, sounds that will be forgotten because no one records them. We have lost so much to oblivion.

And of course, love has sound. Many years later, the wax cylinder that David had kept and thought lost suddenly appeared on Lionel's doorstep. Now an old man, Lionel opened each roll, and when David's voice sounded in one of the cylinders, Lionel collapsed and choked.

David sang the folk song Silver Dagger that they had sung to each other on their first day. David's voice was broken, raw, and rough, it couldn't be called music, it was just the sound of singing. But as said, sound has no limits, no standards. So it is like love. It exists everywhere, and is endless.

We usually think of music as a higher, more complex, more profound form of sound. But the film doesn't call folk songs music history, it calls it sound history. Because music requires sophistication, requires performance, but sound doesn't.

Hien Trang

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/di-tim-am-thanh-da-mat-20251109102933115.htm