The actor Paul Mescal has hit out at critics who’ve drawn comparisons between The History of Sound, a homosexual romance by which he stars reverse Josh O’Connor, and Ang Lee’s landmark western Brokeback Mountain.
Speaking at a press convention in Cannes the day after the film’s premiere, Mescal – who adopted a supporting efficiency in Andrew Haigh’s acclaimed homosexual ghost story All of Us Strangers with enjoying the lead in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II – mentioned he believes cinema is “moving away” from alpha male roles.
In The History of Sound, directed by Oliver Hermanus, whose Kurosawa remake Living scored an Oscar nomination for Bill Nighy three years in the past, Mescal and O’Connor play musicologists who journey to New England simply after the primary world warfare to file the folks songs of their rural countrymen.
“It’s ever-shifting,” mentioned Mescal. “I think maybe in cinema we’re moving away from the traditional, alpha, leading male characters. I don’t think the film is defining or attempting to redefine masculinity, I think it is being very subjective to the relationship between [their characters] Lionel and David.”
Asked whether or not he was happy by comparisons some critics had drawn with Brokeback Mountain, by which Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal star as ranchers who fall in love in Nineteen Fifties Wyoming, Mescal rejected the concept.
“I personally don’t see the parallels at all with Brokeback Mountain, other than we spent a little time in a tent,” he mentioned.
Lee’s drama, which controversially misplaced out on a greatest image Oscar to Crash in 2005, is, continued Mescal, “a beautiful film but it is dealing with the idea of repression … I find those comparisons relatively lazy and frustrating, but for the most part I think the relationship I have to the film is born out of the fact that it’s a celebration between these men’s love and not the repression of their sexuality.”
Mescal then praised his absent co-star O’Connor, who made his identify in Francis Lee’s queer drama God’s Own Country and is now ending manufacturing on Steven Spielberg’s subsequent film, calling him “one of the easiest persons” to set up a rapport with.
“Josh has a great gift,” he mentioned. “The person who the general public sees is very similar to the one that we know and I think that’s very difficult for an actor in today’s age to do.
“We’ve known each other for about five years and we were definitely friendly so that foundation of safety and play was there, but that relationship really deepened in the three or four weeks we were filming.”
The actor mentioned their bond was additional deepened by a shared love of the exhausting sweet Jolly Ranchers.
“It sounds kind of coy but Josh is just incredibly silly to me,” mentioned Mescal. “We got fixated on this diet drink during the shooting process but we would also become fixated on having eight Jolly Ranchers a day … There’s a microcosm to our relationship that I think of Josh and I think of jolly ranchers.”
The History of Sound was warmly greeted at its Cannes premiere on Wednesday night, though with not fairly the identical rapturous reception because the later film to display screen that night, Sentimental Value.
O’Connor can even be seen in one other film premiering on Friday on the festival, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind. Later this yr Mescal will star as William Shakespeare reverse Jesse Buckley in Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet.
