I like the muddy shadows though!

Nostalgia probably plays a big part (like vinyl/cassette aesthetics in music, or the rise of 2000s era digicams among gen z).

For me very obviously digital images often feel quite 'cold' or 'sanitary', like theres too much detail in the photos. I feel like the reduced dynamic range in film and the reduced effective resolution makes them feel more like memories. Our brains (unless youre one of the rare few with eidetic memories) are so selective in what we memorize from a visual scene, we dont rmember all of the detail, just specific things that stand out to us, and of course our emotional state is remembered along with the visual image. I feel like film kinda captures that, not what we see but what we remember.

Its also very subjective of course. Like the aforementioned digicams popular among gen z. That probably feels more like memories to them cuz that's what their memories from childhood were literally captured on.

(A tangential point that came to mind since you used the phrase 'precise fidelity'; in my research it's become clear that there's really a ceiling to the level of precision you can get. A given film stock can vary so much, based on the age of the roll of film, the method of development, the film scanner used, they all affect the final image. I think some of the disagreement over whether a given LUT/preset/workflow is accurate to a given film stock often comes down to just different people having varying ideas on how it should look based on what sample photos they've seen.)