In this film, a girl faces a terrifying trajectory in her life as World War I turned things upside down. Her family is scattered throughout the countryside, where a girl from a Scottish farm faces real terror. The girl's life at that time reflects the conflict that still exists.
[It took] Terence Davies 18 years to bring this adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's novel to life. To show my appreciation, I've seen the film twice; and it's just as brutally devastating and moving second time around.
Like Davies' best work, the movie employs classical rigor - perfectly symmetrical, painterly landscapes and interiors - with unexpected postmodern touches.
Terence Davies is a clear-eyed nostalgia artist specializing in the retrieval of the mood and the color of the past. Sunset Song... seems like the culmination of his work.
It's an absorbing, finely composed, fretful film. But when it's over, there is as much relief for the filmgoer as appreciation for the filmmaker's art.
Davies tries things nobody else would try. Here that means allowing the choral passages - scenes in which individual characters and groups of characters express their feelings in popular ballads or folk songs - plenty of room.
Terrible things happen to the people in this film, but the story is captivating nonetheless. Although the story is a downer, there is a kind of noble enduring spirit shown by Chris throughout the film, and that helps a lot.
It blooms with moments of astonishing beauty: a yellow frenzy of springtime trees; a still room where the light slants in the window like a reaching hand; a desolate landscape, impossibly green.
