Sunset Song (Terrence Davies, 2015)

[GaryC]

- A Terrence Davies period drama shot on 65mm

Sunset Song has been shot in a combination of 65mm for exteriors and digital capture (Arri Alexa) for interiors, but will NOT be released in 70mm according to in70mm.com. Which is certainly disappointing.

[colinr0380]

Sunset Song does look gorgeous from its trailer, with its mix of the 70 mm for exteriors and the digital camerawork for interiors.

[Ribs]

I don't think Sunset Song's got a US distributor yet though, which is a huge shame. I don't think that's likely to change anytime soon given the lukewarm response from its TIFF premiere.

[LittleFerret]

I don't think Sunset Song's got a US distributor yet though, which is a huge shame. I don't think that's likely to change anytime soon given the lukewarm response from its TIFF premiere.

Magnolia has the rights. Hope the 70mm distribution will be better than expected.

[FrauBlucher]

Terence Davies' Sunset Song

[beamish13]

Magnolia has the rights. Hope the 70mm distribution will be better than expected.

Sadly, like Samsara, which was also filmed in 65mm, there won't be any 70mm prints of Sunset Song.

[hearthesilence]

What a wonderful film. First, read this interview in Filmmaker Magazine, Davies talks about how he writes and directs films - in general really, because many of the practical realities of this one (i.e. little money) were true for all of his other films. Very informative interview.

I caught the screening tonight at Film Forum with Davies present, giving the Q&A. Even with him there, it was not sold out (about 3/4 or 4/5 full), and opening weekends are terribly important for films like this (it actually makes a huge impact in terms of how many other theaters will carry it), so if you're in NYC, please go see it this weekend.

They're very different from each other, but I think you can see why Davies is so drawn to this material - it shares a powerful element with Distant Voices, Still Lives…

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in both cases, the focus is on characters who have been traumatized by a horrible family life, brought upon by the father. That alone isn't that compelling, but what's powerful is the aftermath, the sense of survival among these characters.

In the earlier film, the father dies at the end of the first part of what's a two-part film - he's never seen in the second part, and I don't believe he's even mentioned again. But his impact is so traumatic, his presence still hangs over the second part. It colors everything. You feel like the family is all the more vulnerable because of him (as seen by the glimpses of abuse from the husbands), but at the same time, their happiness feels all the more genuine and well-earned because there's a sense of survival there. This is especially true in the last shot.

A similar effect happens here with Sunset Song…

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at least before the war breaks out. In the first hour, after enduring some terrible depths of despair, she becomes free to pursue her own happiness. There's still some anxiety in the air, of what the male-dominated world might do to her at any moment, but for a while, she thrives and the sense of well-deserved happiness is enormous because so much of it is rooted in her survival.

This is real happiness that doesn’t exist in a vacuum or get forced into being - its realization is a road marked by incredible pain, and it's why both film can be dismissed as too much of a downer by a thick, shallow perspective when they're really incredibly life affirming.

[FrauBlucher]

Right on Hearthesilence! All of Davies' films have these journeys that are filled with pain and tragedy but lead to "incredible life affirmation" with no feeling of phoniness or of being forced. That's what makes Davies such a special auteur.

I was there last night as well. It was a treat to hear Davies. It was amazing that he, one the UKs great directors, had trouble raising money for this. Oh the state of cinema.

On a side note, after the QandA I asked him if Distant Voices would get a DVD/Blu release in the states. He said he didn't know and that I should ask his producer, who was standing behind him but in a crowd of people. So I didn't.

[hearthesilence]

Thank you FrauBlucher, and yes, very dreadful how Davies was unable to fund any of his modest-sized projects for so long. All the more shameful that it came on the heels of a lauded great film like The House of Mirth! Fortunately he was able to make more (The Deep Blue Sea and especially Of Time and the City are commendable), and even better, he finally made this one - it's so common for filmmakers (and even bankable stars) to give up on personal projects altogether and never revisit them, but this does not have to be.

Frustrating about Distant Voices, but someone on this forum (MichaelB? Nick?) posted that BFI had a perfectly good HD master sitting on the shelf, ready to go, and if I'm not mistaken it was also restored too - surely it wouldn't be so difficult for a UK distributor to put it out? A US BD release would be better, but someone should at least make it available to the world.

[FrauBlucher]

With Davies being at the Criterion office this past week anything is possible I guess. Perhaps even The House of Mirth, which is with Sony, can end up in the Collection. For me Distant Voices would be huge.

Has Criterion ever worked with Magnolia Pictures?

[MichaelB]

Frustrating about Distant Voices, but someone on this forum (MichaelB? Nick?) posted that BFI had a perfectly good HD master sitting on the shelf, ready to go, and if I'm not mistaken it was also restored too - surely it wouldn't be so difficult for a UK distributor to put it out? A US BD release would be better, but someone should at least make it available to the world.

The BFI's HD masters of both Distant Voices and the Trilogy would be nearly a decade old now, but they certainly exist - and undoubtedly would have been released on BD at the time if the BFI had adopted the format back then.

Of Time and the City was originally created in SD video on account of its tiny budget, so that's unlikely ever to make it to Blu-ray.

[Black Hat]

It's amazing how a few shots of the Scottish country side can trick you into thinking the film is a sprawling epic when in reality it's far closer to a chamber piece.

The performances here were the best I'd seen from a cast in quite some time. Davies did not shy away from taking the material or his actors into uncomfortable emotional places.

I found the juxtaposition between the film's focus on one character's journey to what I perceived it's message — our journey does not matter for this place we inhabit surrounds us, embrace the earth wherever you are — fascinating. There's a line in the beginning which is then called back to at the end which told all

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"Lovely things in the world, lovely that does not endure and they're lovelier for that."

With repeated references to 'the earth' I saw this not so much as a take on humanity on humanity crime, but far more as a conduit to humanity on earth crime. As Chris said

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the earth is what important so don't leave it and as she did nurture it.

[ianthemovie]

I liked but didn't love this, which I had somewhat expected since Davies' literary adaptations tend to leave me cold, but I was absolutely blown away by the montage sequence of the parishioners going to church, set to the hymn "All in the April Evening." It's as astonishingly beautiful as some of the best sequences in The Long Day Closes, such as the montage to "Tammy" or the climactic footage of the rolling clouds over the title song. I sometimes think Davies is better at building films out of such sequences (as in The Long Day Closes and Distant Voices, Still Lives) than he is as a narrative filmmaker. Sunset Song may end up being one of my favorite films of the year just on the basis of that single scene.

[Roscoe]

I wish they'd resisted the urge to subtitle the film -- I found it distracting and unnecessary.

[willoneill]

I wish they'd resisted the urge to subtitle the film -- I found it distracting and unnecessary.

I hadn't read this thread before seeing the film last night, and so I was also surprised the film was subtitled. When I talked to the theatre staff, however, they told me that the subtitles weren't mandatory, but that the theatre owner decided to leave them turned on because a significant number of their patrons are either elderly, or Francophone (Ottawa being on the Ontario-Quebec border) or both, and they didn't want to deal with complaints that the dialogue was unintelligible.

[Roscoe]

(...)the theatre owner decided to leave them turned on because a significant number of their patrons are either elderly (...) and they didn't want to deal with complaints that the dialogue was unintelligible.

I'm assuming that's the case at Film Forum, too. A shame. Maybe they could poll the audience before each screening.

[Fiery Angel]

So Magnolia is not releasing this on Blu....DVD only.

[Ribs]

So Magnolia is not releasing this on Blu....DVD only.

Any chance at all it's being licensed out to Criterion? Like, 5%?

[domino harvey]

Not based on that evidence, Magnolia's just scaled their Blu-ray releases way down

[blythe dawn]

Having watched BBC production of the quair many years ago, and having no problems with the Scottish dialect (this particular one being very sympathetic - you should all try understanding the Doric, which is Aberdeenshire's traditional language) I found this adaptation very easy to understand and become involved in. The characters carried me with them; I felt their anguish, their helplessness, their love and their pain. I sang with them, I laughed and cried with them, and in the end believed that Chris' enduring belief in our land would fulfill her hopes (read Cloud Howe and Grey Granite). Only one thing REALLY grated; there is no 'for the sake of' in Auld Lang Syne. Burns wrote 'For Auld lang Syne' and the words 'for the sake of' were never, and will never, be part of the song.

[knives]

I don't have anything terribly smart to say beyond how enjoyable it is just to have Davies come out with another film. This probably ranks at the lower end of his output, but even then there are so many moments of such intense beauty plus Chris is such a great protagonist that it really is a wonder of a time. It seriously will be a crime of the cinema if Agyness Deyn doesn't break out as at least a minor star.

[zedz]

I don't have anything terribly smart to say beyond how enjoyable it is just to have Davies come out with another film. This probably ranks at the lower end of his output, but even then there are so many moments of such intense beauty plus Chris is such a great protagonist that it really is a wonder of a time. It seriously will be a crime of the cinema if Agyness Deyn doesn't break out as at least a minor star.

His next film was much better, so stay tuned!

[knives]

Yay to that. I do love the use of impressionistic lighting he's experimented with in his last two features and it sounds like this next one takes it to a soft extreme which is nice. I suspect that for any other filmmaker I'd be hooting and hollering since so much works. Something as simple as Chris walking down the stairs after saying goodbye to her father has a surprising amount of punch to it just to give an example. Davies just has set up an impossible standard for himself.

[zedz]

Yay to that. I do love the use of impressionistic lighting he's experimented with in his last two features and it sounds like this next one takes it to a soft extreme which is nice. I suspect that for any other filmmaker I'd be hooting and hollering since so much works. Something as simple as Chris walking down the stairs after saying goodbye to her father has a surprising amount of punch to it just to give an example. Davies just has set up an impossible standard for himself.

Vague spoilers ahoy!

I think the biggest problem with Sunset Song is a certain person's abrupt change of character. According to Davies, this comes directly from the novel where it is similarly unexplained. He understood this was an 'issue' with the material and has his own rationalisation for it, which he chose not to spell out in the film, possibly to stay truer to the book. See below in spoiler tags for Davies' explanation.

Otherwise, I felt that the film was very handsomely mounted but kind of a halfway house between a 'pure' Davies film and a more conventional heritage drama. A Quiet Passion, however, seems to me to be a much more personal work, and interestingly the first Davies' feature to be fully invested with the tart wit he exhibits in person.

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Davies' explanation for Ewan's radical change of character is that, when away at the army training camp, he became aware of the casualty lists for the first time, and his sheer terror at the prospect of his imminent death / mutilation caused the rupture that we see expressed when he returns home before shipping out.

[knives]

That's the feeling I had for the spoiler too even without knowing that as Davies' explanation. I feel he communicated his rational well, but still agree it has too much the feeling of a nonsequitor to fully work.