Sunset Song (15.)
Directed Terence Davies.
Starring Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, Kevin Guthrie, Jack Greenlees, Ian Pirie and Daniela Nardini. 133 mins
Terence Davies, having made his reputation, with boldly uncommercial fare like Distant Voices, Still Lives or Of Time And The City, has spent most of the last two decades working, (or not working; he's always found it difficult to get funding) in that most British of genres, the costume drama literary adaptation. Sunset Song, adapted from the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, is a tale of dour, austere Scottish farming folk and its theme is that nothing endures but the land. Previously his work has struck me as being infatuated with misery and self pity; he seemed to have such a prune faced world-view, such a shrivelled repugnance of humanity that the only book he'd be suited to adapting would be Morrissey's autobiography. Here though he does at least entertain the possibility of hope and happiness. It's comparatively chipper for a tale that contains executions, suicide, rape and filicide.
It's 1911 and Chris (Deyn) is embedded in a large family unit living on a farm in the Grampians and ruled over by the occasionally brutal father (Mullan). She is one of four children, with two more on the way. Academically gifted, she sees education as a way to get out of her life on the farm. With surprising speed though the various elements that contain her fall away and she finds her self in charge of her destiny and drawn to working the land. Her tale is full of setbacks and dismay but also a determination not to succumb.
Davies is always being pushed as a great but neglected British auteur, but Sunset Song isn't the work of a master. It has strong performances and some wonderful well mounted moments such as the scene where the father takes his eldest son Will (Greenless) into the barn to whip him in punishment for using his gun: the camera stays fixed on their faces and when the beating is concluded the shot is held and we watch the son hold the pose before he puts his shirt back on. No point is made in these moments, but a lot is communicated. Other scenes though seem a little stilted: he has the ideas but not quite the skill (or maybe the time and the money) to do it properly. It's a decent effort at getting the spirit of the book onto the screen but a little too pinched to really soar.
Directed Terence Davies.
Starring Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, Kevin Guthrie, Jack Greenlees, Ian Pirie and Daniela Nardini. 133 mins
Terence Davies, having made his reputation, with boldly uncommercial fare like Distant Voices, Still Lives or Of Time And The City, has spent most of the last two decades working, (or not working; he's always found it difficult to get funding) in that most British of genres, the costume drama literary adaptation. Sunset Song, adapted from the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, is a tale of dour, austere Scottish farming folk and its theme is that nothing endures but the land. Previously his work has struck me as being infatuated with misery and self pity; he seemed to have such a prune faced world-view, such a shrivelled repugnance of humanity that the only book he'd be suited to adapting would be Morrissey's autobiography. Here though he does at least entertain the possibility of hope and happiness. It's comparatively chipper for a tale that contains executions, suicide, rape and filicide.
It's 1911 and Chris (Deyn) is embedded in a large family unit living on a farm in the Grampians and ruled over by the occasionally brutal father (Mullan). She is one of four children, with two more on the way. Academically gifted, she sees education as a way to get out of her life on the farm. With surprising speed though the various elements that contain her fall away and she finds her self in charge of her destiny and drawn to working the land. Her tale is full of setbacks and dismay but also a determination not to succumb.
Davies is always being pushed as a great but neglected British auteur, but Sunset Song isn't the work of a master. It has strong performances and some wonderful well mounted moments such as the scene where the father takes his eldest son Will (Greenless) into the barn to whip him in punishment for using his gun: the camera stays fixed on their faces and when the beating is concluded the shot is held and we watch the son hold the pose before he puts his shirt back on. No point is made in these moments, but a lot is communicated. Other scenes though seem a little stilted: he has the ideas but not quite the skill (or maybe the time and the money) to do it properly. It's a decent effort at getting the spirit of the book onto the screen but a little too pinched to really soar.
