Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

TIFF is over but the movies keep coming.  So this week, I’m looking at three new American movies, two about music and one about sports. There are two men recording folk songs in the forest, an ambitious quarterback at a training camp in the desert, and a former teen idol wowing audiences on a Vegas stage.

The History of Sound

Dir: Oliver Hermanus

It’s the early 20th Century in rural Kentucky. Lionel (Paul Mescal) likes listening to his father sing while he plays the fiddle. Music for him is different from most folks: he has synesthesia. This means each musical note has a distinct colour, flavour and meaning. Eventually his love of music and beautiful voice wins him a full scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music. At a Boston pub one night, he recognizes a song his father used to play, coming from a young man at the piano.  David (Josh O’Connor) knows every word. As an ethnomusicologist, he wants to collect as many distinct folk songs and ballads as he can, before they are lost forever. David has perfect pitch and a photographic memory. The two trade songs they know, and somehow, end up in bed together that night. That chance encounter turns into regular trysts at David’s apartment.

Later he invites Lionel to join him in a fieldwork project. They roam across the state of Maine, recording songs everywhere from logging camps to schoolhouses, And they record it all on wax cylinders (this is before flat discs are invented) carefully stored in a leather satchel. And each night they sleep together in a tiny tent. Is this true love? And what will happen to their relationship after the project is finished?

The History of Sound is a touching, bittersweet gay romance — before the word gay existed — set within the larger context of war and music. It’s directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus (Moffie) and its based on a short story by Ben Shattuck. I wonder if the characters are modelled on Alan Lomax, the ethnomusicologist who recorded thousands of songs and started the folk music revival in the 1950s. Paul Mescal is spot-on as the sensitive kid in a clapboard shack who grows up to be a cosmopolitan musician; as is Josh O’Connor’s  portrayal of an enigmatic musical genius with hidden secrets. The images are as lovely as the music in this tender and moving film.

I really liked it.

Him

Co-Wri/Dir: Justin Tipping

It’s San Antonio, Texas, and their NFL team, the Saviours, is looking for a new quarterback to replace their MVP Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), due to retire in a year. Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) is a young quarterback who lives for football — his father trained him for this since he was a little kid. When he’s offered the position if he agrees to an intense one-on-one, bootcamp with his idol Isaiah White, of course he says yes; this is the fulfillment of all his dream. Thing is, he recently had a serious injury that left him with a bad concussion and a track of staples in his head. If he aggravates his brain, it might end his football career before it starts. But as his father always told him, No Pain, No Gain. Cameron heads out to the training camp in the desert. 

There he encounters absolute luxury: gourmet food and priceless art in a spacious brutalist palace. There are saunas and ice baths, and daily blood transfusions for Isaiah. Cameron too tastes this luxury — and sexual temptations — offered by Isaiah’s entourage, especially the grotesquely made-up wife Elsie White (Julia Fox), an influencer who sells her own line of sex toys. Isaiah is the GOAT — the Greatest of All Time — and his virulent fans wear goat horns on their heads. Cameron, on the other hand, holds onto silver cross. He’s given a series of Squid-Game-like ordeals he must endure before Isaiah gives him the nod. And as the tasks grow increasingly horrific, his morals are severely challenged. Can he pass the tests? And is he ready to give up his innate morality and embrace pro-sports and all it offers?

Him is a psychological thriller about a young man confronting his hero (who is also his nemesis) even as he uncovers the dark underbelly of pro football. It’s produced by Jordan Peele, so you might expect a suspense/thriller with mind-blowing surprises. If so, you’ll be sorely disappointed. What you’ll get instead is more like a highly-stylized, extended music video than a horror film. There’s lots of dazzle and flash — and an equal amount of blood — but it’s never scary or surprising. And director Tipping uses film techniques like a kid playing with toys. Why are people shown in in infrared X-rays? Why a long fashion shot sequence in what’s supposed to be a scary scene? Why do cowboy-hatted cheerleaders continue dancing in the face of horrific deaths? There are some great visual cues — like the aluminium stitches in his skull evoking the side of a football — but it’s all show, no substance in this cheap morality play. 

Him is fun to look at, but there’s nothing there.

EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert

Dir: Baz Luhrmann

It’s the 1950s. Elvis is the King of Rock and Roll with a series of hits and the nation goes wild over his thrusting pelvis and his soulful voice.  Later, he is drafted into the army where he serves two years. Afterwards he turns to Hollywood where hue churns out a series of hits alongside sex goddesses like Ann-Margaret. And late in the 1960s he signs a multi-year contract to perform before sold-out audiences at a Las Vegas Casino. He’s up there every day, dressed in eggshell blue jumpsuits, covered in silver studs, sequins and spangles, joking with the crowds, and sweating buckets. He is accompanied by a retinue of back up singers, musicians and elaborate lighting. And that is basically how Elvis spends the rest of his life, until he collapses and dies in  Graceland, age 42.

EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert is a combination documentary and musical performance. Just two years ago, we had both Baz Lurhmann’s biopic Elvis and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, two similar stories told from different points of view, neither of which were particularly good. And now, out of nowhere comes this  third one. I’m not an Elvis fan, nor do I like the kitschy

Buzz Luhrmann at EPIC’s world premiere at TIFF50: Photo (c) Jeff Harris

and gaudy films of Baz Luhrmann. Which is why I’m shocked at how much I enjoyed this movie (I saw it on an IMAX screen at TIFF last week, almost by accident.) Ostensibly just a musical record it’s actually a succinct and tight history of the man, so much better than those bloated biopics. 

It’s fantastic, a masterpiece of creative editing, colour restoration and music mixing. It’s absolutely stunning. The songs he sings are mainly hits from the 1960s cover-versions of Bridge Over Troubled Water, You’ve lost that Loving Feeling, and even gospel songs. And over the course of a single song, we see him on stage, in rehearsal, or in the recording studio, shot over many years, but without a break in the music. And despite Luhrmann’s gaudy excess, somehow his capture of Elvis in a psychedelic shirt or sparkling gold belt buckles just looks right. 

EPIC is the perfect concert film.

Him and The History of Music both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings;  EPIC: Elvis Presley In Concert played at TIFF and will be released soon.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.