Sunset Song

Sunset Song is a classic Scottish novel, part of a trilogy by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and much loved by many, many people (including my wife).

I confess to having not read it, so had no particular expectations when approaching this movie which happens to have been made possible by two of my friends, Bob Last and Ginnie Atkinson.

It will divide audiences because the pace is slow.

Glacial.

But I loved it.

Much media attention has focused on the casting of supermodel come actor Agyness Deyn (completely contrived name) as a Mancunian playing a seminal Scottish role but I have to say I liked her performance, and her accent. The scene in which she learns of her husband's war news is particularly well acted.

Of course this movie is about Terence Davies. He makes very few but when he does they tend to be statements about British life and, for me, this is another great entry in his canon of work.

Davies could have made a feminist statement through Deyn's character, had she been more assertive, but he resists the temptation and instead reflects the male dominance of relationships in the early 20th century (leading up to and including the first world war).

Two and a bit hours, with zero action, and not much dialogue can't be most people's cup of tea (much has been made of the regular return to a certain corn field but, you know what, I didn't care).

It is a languid and lovely observation of a lifestyle that is long past and male dominated.

Special mentions for the ever brilliant Peter Mullan (a beastly father) and a great performance by Kevin Guthrie as the husband of the central character.

An amazing drama about the life, especially it reveals what it would be like being a woman farmer living in the early decade of the twentieth century. The film was adapted from the book of the same name that's dealt with the rural Scottland subject. Even though I'm not familiar with the original material I would say it was one of the best novel-to-screen translation I have seen. The long runtime has never been the issue, but slowly, solidly told tale. My only disappointment is that it was not in the Scottish language since it was about a Scottish family.

There were many Scottish dialects that I did not get at first, so I had to google them to know the meaning. But I liked it which reveals the true nature of the local culture. I meant it essential to narrate a tale in the native flavour to enhance the richness in its contents. The story sets in the 1910s that centres on a farm girl named Chris. An epic life journey from the girlhood to womanhood. Under her atrocious father, the film tells how the whole family was living in the fear. After a death in the house, the event slowly begins to tear the family apart, leaving Chris behind to take the ultimate decisions about her future and the family land.

Anybody would definitely feel bored in the initiation part, because you won't understand the story right away. If you manage to survive in the first half, then you can easily get through in the remaining by liking it a lot. It was nothing like we know the story or we don't, it was simply about the twist and turns of somebody's life just like ours, except it was from a different timeline. Precisely to say the phases of life is what this film is all about. Like shifting the gear in the car, according to the condition of the road and the destination. The joy and sorrow are the part of the life which is sometimes depends on the decision we and around us make.

"You will need to face men for yourself. When the time comes, there's no one can stand and help."

It was totally an unexpected film, kind of reminded me 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Love Comes Softly'. Focused mainly on a woman, in the men dominated world. It was not just a rural theme, but also sometimes takes us beyond to other topics. Like during the first world war and under the English dominated UK, how the Scots lost the rights and their culture disappeared. No doubt why Scots are asking for their own nation.

The romance was another turning point in the story, like raising strong from the fall. After seeing lots of similar changes, I was unable to predict what conclusion may come. But it was strong and intentional with some wonderful dialogues. I loved the beautiful landscapes from the different seasons. It was actually shot in the New Zealand, Scottland and Luxembarough. There's no expansion in the locations, mainly it sets in and around a farmhouse and very occasionally other than these parts.

The one in the Chris' shoe was amazing. Like usual, Peter Mullan was fantastic and similarly others as well in their short stay. As the story progress, consequently the film characters reshuffled. Even for us, the main character Chris is like crossing through a juncture from the coming-of-age to self- discovery. Displaying the transformation of Chris from a certain period of time was the film's great achievement. Like how a landscape change from the dawn to dust, this woman's life sees the same fate. That's what the title implies.

I don't know this British director, but this film opened a new door to me further to check it out his other works. I don't know either that everybody would like it, but it is really one of the wonderful drama of the 2015 and I recommend it to all, especially if there's no problem for you for a long story told in the slow pace. I hope they make films out of the remaining two books as well.

8/10

Is this a masterpiece ? I really have no idea, but I sense that it might be. The filming is perfect, and the lead actress incredibly good. I have not read the book upon which it is based, and to be honest I have no desire to do so. Davies is a masterly director, but then again I have not much of a desire to see his films. ' The House of Mirth ' is I think his best film, and from the works I have seen of his ' The Deep Blue Sea ' is his worst. During the first half of ' Sunset Song ' I endured the cruelty of the world he was depicting, but towards the end I thought enough is enough. Overall he presents a dour view of life, shot through with a sparse amount of happiness. His vision maybe true and I have seen many depressing films that I have considered great, but as this film reached its ending I had endured enough of what I had seen. Some will unreservedly give it a 10, and there again I am not sure it does not merit that. I can only repeat; is this a masterpiece ? I do not think that I want to know simply because the physical pain and mental pain is too much to bear.

The father of former San Francisco Mayor Jack Shelley once told him, "The day you forget where you came from, you won't belong where you are." This advice is not lost on Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn, "Clash of the Titans"), a young woman coming of age in Terence Davies' ("The Deep Blue Sea") Sunset Song. Adapted from the 1932 novel of Lewis Grassic Gibbon and set in Scotland in the early 1900s, the film is more than a song of sunset, it is a symphony of the fields and lakes and distant mountains of Aberdeenshire and a young woman devoted to the land, harvesting the wheat, lying in the sun, wrapping herself in "the old star-eaten blanket of the sky." Talking of herself in voice-over, she says, "Nothing endured but the land. Sea, sky and the folk who lived there were but a breath. But the land endured…she was the land."

The gorgeous painterly views photographed by cinematographer Michael McDonough ("Winter's Bone"), however, does not conceal the isolation felt by those coming up against a system that ostracizes anyone standing against the town's social and religious conformity. Women especially are at a disadvantage. They have to endure sex without contraception, painful and often fatal childbirth, and marital beatings and rapes that are considered part of the marriage vow, "for better or worse." The film traces Chris' growth from an intelligent but passive student to an adult both willing and able to stand up for herself. At first she is seen in school where she is admired for her excellent French pronunciation.

At home things are different, however. The Guthrie farm is run by the patriarch, John (Peter Mullan, "Tyrannosaur"), a sadistic bully who beats his son Will (Jack Greenlees) for minor infractions such as naming his horse "Jehovah," and forces his wife Jean (Daniela Nardini) into repeated pregnancies. Both Will and Jean find a way out in vastly different ways, but Chris, having given up any hopes of becoming a teacher, endures her brutal father until he is felled by a stroke. Fortunately, her paternal aunt Janet (Linda Duncan McLaughlin) and Uncle Tam (Ron Donachie, "Filth") arrive to take her younger brothers back to raise in Aberdeen but Chris carries on at Blawearie, running the farm herself.

As Ma Joad said in "The Grapes of Wrath," "With a woman, it's all in one flow, like a stream - little eddies and waterfalls - but the river, it goes right on." Like the strong-willed Bathsheba of Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd," Chris never succumbs to her mother's cynicism about men, falling in love with and marrying a local farmer Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie). The scenes where the Ewan and Chris find happiness in marriage and childbirth are the most joyous of the film, especially when Chris sings "The Flowers of the Forest" at their wedding, but, there are signs that it cannot last. When World War I is declared, anyone who doesn't enlist is labeled a coward, accused of refusing to fight for God, King, and country.

Succumbing to threats from Reverend Gibbon (Jack Bonnar), Ewan enlists but the war will change him forever and make him unrecognizable to those who are closest to him. Chris bears her fate in poetic terms, saying, "There are lovely things in the world, lovely, that do not endure, and they're lovelier for that," but her positive feelings soon turn to denial. Sunset Song is a beautiful film and a tribute to those who have the courage and patience to endure pain. Though there are many moments when we know that we are in the hands of a master but the film, in spite of its physical beauty and compelling message, never reaches the emotional depth necessary for a truly powerful experience and the haunting music of a bagpipe at the end only suggests the great film it might have been.

Firelight, swells of the North Sea, hayfields, rain, a wedding dinner by candlelight, mist, the morning sun, green mountains, Scottish song, clothing fashions from a hundred years ago and the writing of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, are brought to life. It is said that nothing but the land endures, yet there is something about each of these characters – good and bad - that endures too. Intriguing characters include a sensual, pretty and bright young woman who loves the landscape and dreams of a better life, a strict and abusive farm family patriarch in desperate need of an intervention and anger management classes, and a young man turned bitter and cowardly by war and violence. The story is told mostly through the eyes of the young woman, Chris, as she grows and experiences hardships as well as bliss. It is amazing to witness her transformations through the people she comes in contact with, the land and the emotions she feels. Kindness, love, nature and light endure when we let them. Anger, violence and hatred make them the lovelier for that.

The director is obviously extremely experienced and capable at such historic United Kingdom stories. He invigorates the senses in sight and sound, and we even almost feel the emotions of the characters and smell the hay, mist and mud. I suppose this is the "memory realism" style I read about. Remarkably, and appropriately to the themes of the story, Davies does not shy away from the rawness of anger, sex, nudity and violence. He is equally adept at bringing out the beauty of the story as well as its darkness. There is exemplary acting here especially by the leads, yet with the exception of the one who played Ewan (each of his moods seemed the same to me). For those few who can differentiate between the sectors of Scotland, the film takes place in Northeast Scotland. The excitement of another "Florida premiere" was palpable (LOL!) at this 2016 Miami International Film Festival screening.