The History of Sound (2025) unfolds slowly, much like life itself—measured, meandering, and suddenly overwhelming. With sobering and grounding performances from Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, Oliver Hermanus’ film invites us to experience life through the senses, most notably, through sound. Rather than grand events, Hermanus emphasizes how fleeting, intimate moments accumulate into meaning. The History of Sound is, at its core, a love letter to what it means to live and to love.

The film follows Lionel (Mescal), a gifted singer with the ability to see sound through sensory perception. Lionel meets David (O’Connor) and forms an intimate bond. Set between 1917 and 1920, the two share brief moments together, most notably during a music expedition that visits small, close-knit communities and records folk songs handed down through generations. 

They find each other through sound, with David quite literally silencing the room around Lionel when he makes his presence known through song. Music connects them. 

Even in the silence and the white noise—the quiet pauses between words, a longing gaze, the faint rustle of leaves, the crackle of a fire, the chatter of a packed bar—there is something profound to be discovered in The History of Sound. These details envelop us in the textures of Lionel’s world. By heightening our awareness of sound, the film mirrors Lionel’s heightened perception, allowing us to feel life as he does: layered, resonant, and profoundly alive.

The film’s sensory richness, particularly in how it treats sound as both subject and atmosphere, creates a moving cinematic experience. The folk songs carry the weight of entire communities. As Lionel narrates later in the film, folk songs tell the stories of humanity. You wonder, as Lionel must, what his memory will become. What sounds will capture his life? What lyrics will tell his tale? 

The film unfolds instead in the quiet, cumulative moments of Lionel’s life and his longing for David. This is not to say the story is without drama or emotional twists, but they all feel relatively minor. It keeps you on edge, waiting for the shoe to drop, for a revelation that will announce itself as the purpose of the story. You realize then that this tension is the film’s purpose. As the film comes to a close and we see all the life that Lionel lived, you realize that the small moments were the story all along. 

By the film’s finale, as we glimpse Lionel in his old age, we realize we have been watching and hearing the song of his life. The camera offers us a fleeting glimpse of photographs of Lionel with figures like Bob Dylan, a suggestion of an entire story beyond the frame. Yet that isn’t the story Hermanus is interested in telling. The emotional payoff lies instead in recognizing that the fragments we have witnessed—the small gestures, the quiet songs, the pauses—were the story all along. The moments that once felt irrelevant suddenly click into place. We realize, almost foolishly, that the film has been teaching us to value the quiet all along.

The History of Sound’s brilliance lies in its deliberate pacing, mirroring the way life itself unfolds—unceremoniously—until you look back and realize its weight. The film’s deliberate rhythm resists the pressure of conventional storytelling, insisting instead that the meaning of a life is not found in climactic events but in small accumulations.

This is not to excuse the film’s slowness. Many viewers may find themselves drifting; the soothing vocals of the film’s folk songs mixed with the cool tones of the cinematography create a lulling, almost hypnotic atmosphere. But this is what makes The History of Sound so profound. It leans into subtlety, asking us to sit in the quiet and reflect on what endures. It captures all of your senses and immerses you entirely. 

In the end, the film feels like a sort of meta-commentary. As viewers, we long for dramatic answers, for a revelation to justify the waiting. Hermanus, though, forces us to question how we view others and our perception of what they value. Lionel, at the end of his life, is no doubt viewed through a specific frame by the other characters in the world who are unfamiliar with his story. Yet we, the audience, know what is truly significant, as we have been watching it unfold over the past 128 minutes. 

The beauty of Hermanus’s work lies in making us complicit in the realization that the truth has been in front of us the entire time. The History of Sound is not a sweeping biopic but a micro-moment in time. A love story that values the interior, the fleeting, the minor as profoundly important, an exploration of self, identity, and what matters to a person. The film, like life, “hits you all at once.” The beauty of The History of Sound lies in how it encapsulates this sensation.

The moments that linger—those that “stick to your ribs,” that play on repeat in your head like your favorite song—are not necessarily the monumental ones. They are the subtle, quiet fragments that become what we hold most dear. By the end, the film leaves us not with the grandeur of a life defined by public achievement, but with the intimacy of one defined by love, music, and memory. For Lionel, it is the end of a life well lived. For us, it is the end of a beautiful film.

Review Courtesy of Kam Ryan

Feature Image Credit to MUBI & Focus Features via The New Yorker