Directed by Oliver Hermanus, “The History of Sound” is an intimate love story that uses the magic of sound to capture and translate the feelings, stories and memories that words fail to express. Released on Sept. 12, Mubi’s new film follows the lives of two folk musicians in the 1910s — Lionel (Paul Mescal) and David (Josh O’Connor) — and their mission to “collect songs.”
Building on his 2024 short story collection of the same name, screenwriter Ben Shattuck crafts a beautiful parallel between the invisible impression songs can leave on a person and the hidden, yet world-changing impact David’s fleeting love leaves on Lionel.
Once the shocking sound of Irish actor Mescal’s Southern accent wears off, the audience is thrust into a heart-wrenching tale about a love that can never be realized. At first, the film risks being overly sentimental, but as soon as Lionel and David meet, the depth of their dialogue and the genuineness of their chemistry quickly drown out any skepticism.
The protagonists first cross paths while studying at the New England Conservatory in Boston. On a night out at a local pub, David convinces Lionel to sing a folk song in front of the crowd. As the shy vocalist begins, David accompanies him on the piano, instinctively finding the right chords to match Lionel’s melody. At this point, the pair’s instant musical understanding is an excellent signifier of their grander emotional one.
O’Connor masters his role as David — Lionel’s older, more worldly and sometimes callous counterpart. Flippant, sardonic and witty, David’s words are mostly deflections or lies, while Lionel, a wide-eyed farm boy from Kentucky, is disarmingly earnest. Lionel’s trusting and sweet outlook on life is as pure as his voice.
“The History of Sound” is a touching film that pushes you to think seriously about what it means to love someone silently. Because of the time they live in, both Lionel and David know they can never actually have a public or permanent relationship — and so they never address it. In fact, throughout the entire film, the two men hardly discuss any of their true emotions. When David is drafted to fight in World War I in 1917, all Lionel says is: “Write, or send chocolate. Don’t die.”
But so much of the film’s beauty lies in the unspeakable — where music, or sound, comes in.
Hermanus’s gorgeous score brutally externalizes the pair’s inner feelings. At one point, while explaining a music recording device to a group of children, Lionel says: “Sound is invisible, right? But it can be physical. It can touch something. It can make an impression.”
This explanation encapsulates the monumental impact of their ephemeral love. In recording Lionel’s voice, David gets to keep him, in a way. It becomes clear that their song-collecting mission embodies a much larger pursuit of trying to record and hold onto human emotions — and this, the film suggests, is the larger history of sound.
After numerous plot twists occurring across continents and decades before finally landing in the ’80s, Lionel — now an esteemed professor — lectures on his new book, dedicated to an unnamed friend who influenced him in ways nobody could know. At the end, he finds the sound tubes he used to record songs with David, and as he listens to David’s voice, he almost falls over with feeling. The audience is left overwhelmingly aware of music’s power to stir emotions, to communicate them and — most touchingly — to preserve them.
Rose Farman-Farma is a sophomore Comparative Literature concentrator from England who loves writing and music.
