Film reviews: A gorgeous account of forbidden love and a celebration of thoughtful masculinity

Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor in The History of Sound

The History of Sound

★★★★☆

The hills are alive with the sound of music in The History of Sound (12A), which opens in Boston in 1917 with a chance encounter between Lionel (Paul Mescal) and David (Josh O’Connor).

Obsessed with the folk songs of rural America, David is fascinated to learn that Lionel is a musical genius who has emerged from the backwoods of Kentucky.

Their common bond quickly deepens into a passionate affair, which leads to David inviting Lionel to join him on “a long walk in the woods”, during which the pair hike through remote parts of mountainous northern Maine, collecting and recording the songs that will otherwise be lost to posterity.

Adapted by Ben Shattuck from his own short story, and directed by Oliver Hermanus, The History of Sound is a gorgeous account of forbidden love, soundtracked by the simple but emotionally profound songs of a culture that is gradually being erased as America rushes to embrace modernity.

Elegantly shot in muted tones and sepia shades by cinematographer Alexander Dynan, the film is something of a paean to tender masculinity, as Lionel and David, neither of them fully sure of themselves, tentatively explore their relationship through a series of small but poignant gestures.

The two leads are superb, with Paul Mescal charmingly reserved and diffident as Lionel finds himself experiencing an emotional palette he never dared to believe existed; meanwhile, Josh O’Connor, whose David pursues Lionel with an archly self-mocking sense of propriety, delivers a compelling performance that is a masterclass in less-is-more.

You can have too much of a good thing, of course, and the film’s 128-minute run time slightly dilutes its emotional impact, but for the most part, this is a film to be cherished for its celebration of a gentle and thoughtful masculinity.

H is for Hawk

★★★☆☆

Claire Foy in H is for Hawk

Adapted from Helen Macdonald’s best-selling memoir, H is for Hawk (12A) stars Claire Foy as Helen, a Cambridge academic who is devastated by the untimely death of her beloved father Alisdair (Brendan Gleeson).

Desperate to find a distraction from her grief, Helen turns to the natural world her father adored and decides that she will hand-rear “a perfectly evolved psychopath”, aka a goshawk, “the noblest of raptors”.

Helen’s thinking is that death is an entirely natural aspect of the goshawk’s existence, and the relationship between Claire Foy and her lethal charge is a joy to behold, and particularly when the goshawk is old enough to start hunting.

Grief, however, is by its nature a private affair, and Philippa Lowthorpe’s film, adapted by Emma Donoghue, finds Helen brooding internally on her loss — a very difficult concept to translate cinematically. Foy is at her best when we see her in conflict with those who fear for her mental wellbeing — particularly her mum (Lindsay Duncan) and best friend Christina (Denise Gough) — and when we see her in flashback larking about with Alisdair, with Brendan Gleeson in terrific form as the gruffly tender father who brooks no nonsense.

Mercy

★★★☆☆

Rebecca Ferguson and Chris Pratt star in Amazon's Mercy

Set in the near future, Mercy (12A) opens with LAPD detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) on trial for murdering his wife Nicole (Annabelle Wallis) and given 90 minutes to prove his innocence; should he fail, the AI entity Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) — who is also jury and executioner — will terminate him with extreme prejudice.

Written by Marco van Belle and directed by Timur Bekmambetov, Mercy opens in intriguing fashion by proposing a horrific scenario in which AI sits in judgement on humans.

Ferguson is deliciously chilling as she employs rigorous logic to outline the damning case against Raven, who protests his innocence and seeks to persuade the implacable AI that he is being framed.

Most persuasive in the early stages of its world-building, Mercy feels like a love-letter to Philip K. Dick’s tales of techno-paranoia, although the final 20 minutes descend into conventional shoot-’em-out chaos.

• All theatrical releases