The History of Sound
Director Oliver Hermanus composes an emotional soundscape that soars.
Laughter and lyrics: Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal
Image courtesy of MUBI.
Close your eyes for a moment and listen to the sounds around you. What do you hear? Sound is one of the most prominent senses of our lives, but because we can’t see it, it tends to be the one we most often take for granted — along with poor smell. Sound, as with smell, has the special power to instantly and vividly transport us back to moments from our past in a fraction of a second. The laugh of a loved one or the notes of a song can be a literal time machine to our memories. Today we have the ability to capture sound anytime, anywhere, with a device that fits in our pocket, but before the advent of recorded sound, voices were lost to time and memory. Thomas Edison wasn’t the first person to record sound, but his magical invention of the phonograph, with its delicate wax cylinders, changed the course of what we hear and how we hear it.
Against that background of the acoustic era, director Oliver Hermanus (Living, Moffie) builds an aural opus based on a pair of short stories by Ben Shattuck — who also pens the screenplay. The History of Sound traces the bond between two gifted Boston Conservatory music students, Lionel (Paul Mescal) and David (Josh O’Connor), who meet in a pub in 1917 and connect over a love of folk music. Years later, after the Great War, they trek through the backwoods of Maine, collecting and preserving traditional folk songs for posterity. The music that connects them becomes the foundation for something far more resonant as their folk song odyssey ventures beyond the act of preservation, becoming a deep expression of love for the voices being saved and those saving them.
The History of Sound adds further captivating performances for Mescal and O’Connor, who are having another stellar year following strong turns in Gladiator II, Challengers, and La Chimera, respectively. This year boasts Mescal in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, O’Connor in Rebuilding, Kelly Reichardt’s Mastermind, and the Knives Out threequel Wake Up Dead Man. Given the subject matter, the sound design led by supervising sound editors Ruy García and Eugene Gearty is superlative. Traditional folk songs (many sung by Mescal and O’Connor) create a haunting sense of longing and loneliness, with arrangements by Sam Amidon — ‘Across The Rocky Mountain,’ ‘The Unquiet Grave,’ and most prominently ‘Silver Dagger’ — along with performances by featured folk artists such as Sheila Kay Adams reverberating throughout the narrative.
Unfolding through that rich tapestry of music, the moments between the notes become as meaningful as the songs themselves. By immersing the audience so deeply in an opulent soundscape, Hermanus creates power in the absence of sound. In moments of silence, the echo of things left unsaid or unseen lingers with the cadence of a symphony never played. Songs carry stories, functioning as oral histories once shared communally, a tradition that now finds its closest parallel in the collective experience of film and theatre. As the phonograph turns the ephemeral into something lasting, the film also reflects on the very nature of cinema itself: images and sounds preserved, moments in time made permanent. Some may scoff at the pace and lose patience in our short-attention-span world, but those who follow Hermanus’ gentle melody will be well rewarded. The story sneaks up with a resounding resonance, bringing with it all the history and memory that a sound can hold.
CHAD KENNERK
Cast: Paul Mescal, Josh O'Connor, Chris Cooper, Molly Price, Raphael Sbarge, Hadley Robinson, Emma Canning, Emily Bergl, Briana Middleton, Gary Raymond, Alison Bartlett, Michael Schantz.
Dir Oliver Hermanus, Pro Sara Murphy, Andrew Kortschak, Lisa Ciuffetti, Thérèsa Ryan-Van Graan, Oliver Hermanus, Zhang Xin, Screenplay Ben Shattuck, Ph Alexander Dynan, Pro Des Deborah Jensen, Ed Chris Wyatt, Music Oliver Coates, Costumes Miyako Bellizzi, Sound Ruy García, Eugene Gearty.
Film4/Closer Media/Tango Entertainment/Storm City Films/End Cue/Fat City-Mubi (US)/Universal (UK).
128 mins. USA/UK. 2025. US Rel: 12 September 2025. UK Rel: 23 January 2026. Cert. R (US), 15 (UK).
