When Folk Love Echoes Through Time: The History of Sound’s Unsettling Lullaby

He’s singing a folk ballad under a Maine sky, and her voice trembles in the background—then war rips through the frame, and you’re caught off guard.

A shimmering trailer plunges us into 1917: Lionel (Paul Mescal), a synesthetic farmhand turned music student, locks eyes with David (Josh O’Connor) at the Boston Conservatory. Their chemistry is immediate, yet fragile—like tuning two resonant instruments before an inevitable crack. That crack arrives in the form of WWI, scattering their harmony across time and geography.

Mescal’s voice—rumored to have stunned Cannes audiences—carries the weight of memory. And O’Connor, aloof yet magnetic, slips into military blues. “Don’t die,” Lionel pleads, and the emotional stakes skyrocket in a whisper.

And Then The Silence Hits

They drift apart—until Maine becomes their sacred space. Wandering forests and wax-cylinder recorders, they chase old songs, chasing ghosts. Yet something disorients. Is this romance or relic? The film’s lush visuals are so clean, so perfectly crafted, that a critic described it as “too polite”. But maybe that reservation is its point: real passion often simmers beneath restraint.

Mescal bristles at comparisons to Brokeback Mountain, calling them “lazy and frustrating”. This isn’t longing hidden—it’s longing celebrated. And when the trailer’s voiceover laments, “I realized I’d never been as happy… collecting songs,” you feel that ache knotting deep in your chest.

Their Chemistry, Amplified

Director Oliver Hermanus has drawn out moments of pure, disarming intimacy—tribute to five years of trust between Mescal and O’Connor. Hermanus even joked that their tent rehearsals echoed with Jolly Ranchers and inside jokes. But those behind-the-scenes sweetness only deepens the question: can comfort be the ultimate spark?

This isn’t merely a period piece—it’s a meditation on how love reverberates across decades. The trailer insists this is “more than the story of queer lives hidden due to a time of denial… it is the story of a man’s life, expressed through the power of sound”. And with Mescal’s Lionel morphing into Chris Cooper’s older self, the film seems to challenge us: what does memory sound like, once the music has faded?

As the trailer ends, we’re left not with answers but with tremors. Their song lingers—unfinished.

Will love, once recorded, echo forever? Or will even the purest harmonies crack under time’s weight?

Sources: EW, People, The Guardian, BBC Culture, Variety, Vanity Fair, Time Out.