Distant Voices, Still Lives

This is an important film and evidently is regarded as such by many serious reviewers, so I watched it and found it sometimes very hard to sit through because it struck more than a few painful chords in my own memory of my family when I was growing up in the 40s and 50s. Indeed.

My continuing impression is that men of that era, not only in the UK and US as well as elsewhere, were really almost clinically unreflective in that they were so used to being tolerated and getting away with murder that they were nearly incapable of seeing themselves in anything resembling a true light.

How women both sustained family life by themselves and because of their friendships with other women belies the fact that they felt powerless to change anything for the better, at least for more than five minutes.

My fantasy is that it would be great for a lot of men of my generation (now 70) to be tied down with their mouths taped and their eyes propped open with toothpicks, if need be, and forced to watch this movie about forty times! Since that's not going to happen, all I can do is recommend that the peers of my generation at least consider watching it. It can only do us good!

Peter

I'm not the sentimental type, I don't know what it was in this movie, the rain, the singing or the sadness of live, but I just got all warm inside. It was such a beautiful film, and it had just the right length too. Very nice.

Both distant voices and the long day closes are remarkable films for their style, and insight into the subtlety of human feelings and failings. They certainly won't be to everyones taste but as pieces of classic cinema they are priceless. Because of their limited appeal it is maybe understandable that they are not films to bring in millions, however it is tragic that they are not available on DVD so that at least they can attract a wider audience. I have the original VHS copies of these films, (bought when they were available - they are not now) and will have to dig these out of storage and have them transferred to DVD.

Pete posthlewaite hits a performance that is so unique it is frightening. so true was the passion there where times in the movie when I wished he would die! The episodic and random nature of the flashbacks made it seem like memories from one's own childhood which reinforced the naturalistic acting and indeed made it almost voyeuristic! The true beauty of the film lies in the realism of the scenes and in the accurate depiction of life as it really is in all it's ugliness! Above all the movie said to me that out of "brutallity" can come "compassion and humanity". One scene really hits home is the Christmas scene where the camera pans up an idyllic British street where the Christmas lights are shining and by nature our faces are starting to smile and then dissolves into the living room where the family are sitting in expectation. You can feel the tension as you see the first shot and when he pulls the tablecloth off the table and shouts "CLEAN THIS UP",I remember jumping up!!! MASTERPIECE In my eyes yes! 10 OUT OF 10

Terrance Davies' two-part nostalgia exercise is, depending on your tolerance for unembellished honesty, either a sentimental trip down memory lane or a cold-eyed wallow in drab English monotony. The British writer director went to great lengths to re-create a facsimile of working class family life circa 1940-1950, and his meticulous attention to detail sets an almost too perfect mood: the film is both painfully realistic and totally depressing. Using a fragmented, hopscotch style approximating the actual process of memory itself, Davies mixes bits and pieces of autobiographical detail to show how cultural traditions have a way of repeating themselves for a typical Liverpool family, held together by stifling blue collar conditions and a good deal of recreational singing (38 period songs are featured on the soundtrack). The snapshot style doesn't allow for any dramatic momentum, but the film is constructed more as a sampling of brief, transient moments, and is extremely well crafted and emotional despite the often oppressive melancholy.