The History of Sound
MUBI | Release Date: September 12, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
13
Negative:
1

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
NMELou ThomasMay 22, 2025
A deeply sad movie about thwarted love, The History of Sound is essential viewing. Read full review
91
Original-CinLiam LaceySep 18, 2025
If the film’s execution doesn’t always rise to the level of its elusive ambitions, the fault is not a lack of sincerity. Read full review
90
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 11, 2025
Hermanus’ latest establishes him as a filmmaker of uncanny grace and Mescal and O’Connor as two of Hollywood’s finest young stars. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 22, 2025
If you tap into The History of Sound’s soulful undercurrents, the soaring spiritual dimensions of the music — in songs more often about people than Divinity — and the depth of feeling in Mescal and O’Connor’s performances, this is a film of lingering melancholic beauty. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenSep 17, 2025
A bit muted, especially for a movie about songcraft, The History of Sound nevertheless quietly builds in import until it reaches a devastating finale, one that musically meditates on the impermanence of love and life Read full review
83
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 18, 2025
This is not a film to easily swoon over, but mournfully contemplate. Read full review
80
Radio TimesJames MottramJan 23, 2026
A tender, decade-spanning love story, exquisitely told by director Oliver Hermanus, The History of Sound is yet another wonderful showcase for the considerable talents of Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal. Read full review
80
EmpireLaura VenningJan 23, 2026
A profoundly affecting story of doomed love and lost time that boasts captivating performances from Mescal and O’Connor. Come for the boys, stay for the magic of storytelling through song. Read full review
80
Screen DailyLee MarshallMay 22, 2025
Reticence is also the keynote of The History of Sound’s two riveting central performances. Read full review
80
ColliderTherese LacsonMay 22, 2025
Artfully combining song, romance, and unique settings, Oliver Hermanus offers a heartbreaking and emotional film that reminds us not only of the enduring nature of love but also the power of sound and song. Read full review
75
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodMay 22, 2025
Heavens, that masterful first half of filmmaking. That quiet, subtle love affair. That charismatic pairing between Mescal and O’Connor, which, for a moment, feels like a cinematic romance for the ages. Oh, I’ll pay a ticket just to experience that again, absolutely. But just that. Just that. Read full review
75
IndieWireRyan LattanzioMay 22, 2025
While The History of Sound suffers from some pacing issues and detours that turn up as dead ends, following Lionel’s path as a budding ethnomusicologist collecting songs and sounds to record on cylinders, this is a lovely movie capable of wounding and haunting you. Read full review
75
The Film StageLuke HicksMay 22, 2025
I don’t know if The History of Sound is worth revisiting for its devastating romance, the likes of which deepen this story’s emotion but make it a much heavier haul, but I’m counting down the days until I can revisit its songs, sonically and visually; the hearing speaks for itself. Read full review
70
The New YorkerJustin ChangSep 19, 2025
Mescal’s good-humored watchfulness and contemplative calm make the character a companionable presence, even as the filmmaking ultimately succumbs to inertia and the great, defining passion of Lionel’s life recedes into the mists of memory. Read full review
70
Screen RantGraeme GuttmannMay 22, 2025
It’s thoughtful and quietly devastating. In its insistence to buck conventions of the queer drama, though, it inevitably falls into some of the very traps it hopes to avoid, landing somewhere between expectations and the underwhelming pic it flirts with becoming. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 22, 2025
At times, Hermanus’s style is effective, selling us on the film’s lonely, years-spanning heartsickness. But too often the film’s muted emotion feels more gimmicky than credible to Lionel and David’s circumstances, particularly because Hermanus is so demure about sex; we barely even see the men kissing. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineMarshall ShafferSep 11, 2025
The film movingly conjures the feeling of music’s creation of a suspended present tense. Read full review
63
The Associated PressLindsey BahrSep 10, 2025
The film, which runs over two hours, is building to a profound conclusion, a payoff for all the slow-paced and melancholy moments that preceded it. But it requires definite patience from its audience that it doesn’t necessarily earn just by existing. Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeyJan 23, 2026
The History of Sound has fashioned a deliberate non-epic from wispy material, keeping such a tight lid on sentiment, it’s like an obstinate clamshell with its secrets. Expectations need recalibrating beforehand so as not to feel lightly underwhelmed. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleSep 17, 2025
For all the movie’s crisp attention to bifurcated lives, The History of Sound more aptly resembles a painstakingly dry still life than a moving picture. Read full review
60
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMay 23, 2025
South African director Oliver Hermanus finds plenty of deep feeling and sincerity here but his beautiful-looking, measured period piece gets stifled by its own languors – especially in a first half that needs a slug or two of moonshine to inject some life into it. Read full review
60
The TimesEd PottonMay 22, 2025
The last act has a disappointing inevitability, with little of the transcendent emotion of the first hour. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesTara BradyMay 21, 2025
The wafer-thin characterisation and over-reliance on musical recitals make it hard to buy into the film’s premise of enduring love. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreSep 16, 2025
Those bookending sequences, the start and the finish, are the only ones The History of Sound fully inhabits, while in all the others it plays coy, holding back for no particular reason than that it offers the illusion of sophistication. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireSep 12, 2025
Everything about “The History of Sound” is restrained to a fault—until it’s about the music. And then it bursts with passion and pure emotion. Read full review
50
The New York TimesNatalia WinkelmanSep 11, 2025
The History of Sound doesn’t trust its own gentleness, and the inertia of the filmmaking gives the whole affair a detached, try-hard feeling. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubJason GorberMay 23, 2025
From its opening moments, The History Of Sound feels like it’s going to be something grand. It’s this feeling that makes the warbling result that much more disappointing, a song soon to be forgotten. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 22, 2025
The History of Sound is a movie that never fully finds a life beyond what it is on paper. Read full review
40
The IndependentSophie Monks KaufmanMay 22, 2025
Hermanus gestures towards a sweeping story and in the process loses the pulse of the material that is there. As the window dressing is lavishly built up, the love story itself slips away. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 22, 2025
Everything here is out of the top drawer of production value: but it never really comes to passionate life. Read full review
40
BBCNicholas BarberMay 22, 2025
Mescal and O'Connor are nuanced and charismatic, and it's amazing that an Irish actor and English actor should play these most American of roles so flawlessly, but The History of Sound doesn't probe beneath the attractive surface of its star-crossed lovers. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonSep 18, 2025
The History of Sound is even more repressed than its characters, and at over two hours, that’s far from entertaining. Read full review
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