Vozes Distantes

It's difficult to say exactly what this luminous masterpiece is about. It's a memoir of sorts but a highly stylized one where memories are re-experienced and conveyed through songs, frequently communally sung; painful familial interactions powerfully shot as if the scenes were paintings or sets on a stage. This formal approach resonates simultaneously with richness and alienation, pathos and ecstasy. Difficult to shake.

Not at all what I expected and there's certainly nothing quite like it anywhere in the history of cinema. Powerfully acted and masterfully directed: One of the great works of British movie-making.

I also highly recommend Davies' two other great works: "The Long Day Closes" and the recent, made for Showtime movie starring an amazing Gillian Anderson, "The House of Mirth." I personally didn't care that much for "The Neon Bible."

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.

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.

In an interview, Terence Davis has stated that he had to tone down the reality of the story because as depressing as the film is, the "real thing" would be unendurable for audiences. We have all seen rage on the screen. Brando, De Niro, and Pesci, have had their moments, but the two actors who truly frightened me, and left me literally trembling, were Temuera Morrison, as the Maori father in "Once Were Warriors", a film from New Zealand, and Peter Postlethwaite, as the father in "Distant Voices". These actors hit something visceral in me, that my therapists never even guessed at. Fear of the father? Living with a man (my dad, so consumed with anger at a world that never had a truly happy day for him) who could only vent his rage at his family? Who knows, and at the age of 68, who the hell cares. Besides, Postlethwaites (I'm sure this name kept him out of the "bigtime" for many years, a little shobiz humor folks) acting honors go to the mother, Freda Dowie. She's on Masterpiece Theatre a lot and she's either mentally ill, or like this woman, a battered housewife trying to keep her kids and herself alive. Happiness or even a nice day is not on her agenda. Just trying to get through poverty, and not having her jaw broken by her husband is a happy day to her. If you like exploding autos, and thong draped anorexic Barbie dolls, this movie is not for you. But if you want to see a work of art carved out of Davis' agony, see this movie. Oh yes, I remember he said in an interview on NPR, that he couldn't remember his father ever touching him, or saying a kind word to him.

This film grows on you - the first time I saw it, it was rather bleak and just a bit boring.

However, the more you think about it and if you were lucky enough to record it and watch it again, it slowly but surely turns into a masterpiece.

The characters, the setting, the atmosphere is true England - England which has all but disappeared. This film is so unique it deserves a place up there with the likes of Citizen Kane, Pelle The Conqueror etc. etc.

Don´t miss it!!!