The History of sound, Echoes of a love that refuses to fade.

When I watched The History of Sound, I felt it more than just saw it. The story of Paul Mescal’s Lionel and Josh O’Connor’s David unfolds in a world of wax-cylinders and folk songs, in the years following the Great war. Yet although the setting is 1917 – 1920s New England, it doesn’t feel distant. It feels urgent.

Why it feels timeless

• Because the film is about listening, to music, to memory, to the things left unsaid. Lionel’s synesthesia, the sense that he can taste and see sound, becomes a metaphor for how we carry our past.

• Because it reminds us how fleeting connection can imprint on a life. They meet young, they record the voices of others' songs, and their own song lingers long after.

• Because in an era (2025) where we switch between screens, apps, instant everything, there’s something radical about the slow, deliberate pace of the film: of songs preserved in the countryside, of glances held, of journeys taken and roads not travelled.

Why it matters now

In 2025, the world feels loud and fractured. The History of Sound invites us to slow down. It asks: What do we hear when we turn off the noise? What parts of ourselves are preserved in memory?

What love, what music, what moment will persist after we’ve moved on?The film’s focus on two men in a time of constraint, whose feelings aren’t shouted but whispered, is also quietly potent in our moment. It’s a story of identity, of passion, of art, of loss, packaged in a period piece yet speaking directly to our contemporary longing for authenticity. Critics point out it may be restrained, but perhaps that restraint is its power.

A reflection through the filter of now

I find myself thinking about the film in the small hours: the flicker of candlelight, the vinyl record spinning, the taste of coffee left at the edge of the cup. In those moments the film lingers.Because really, what is art but the imprint of a moment we refuse to let go of? And what is memory but recorded sound, the echo of what once was, and what still might be?

The History of Sound doesn’t give us neat closure. It gives us possibility. The possibility that something heard once, felt once, can shape every step afterwards.

For you

If you’re drawn to films that don’t rush but breathe; if you’re drawn to stories that hide their shouting in the quiet; if you, like me, believe that memory has volume, color, and texture, then this film will matter.

And if you sit with it long enough, you’ll hear not just the folk songs of another era, but the faint hum of your own soundtrack.