A follow up to the excellent 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' and, for me, an even better film. I haven't seen either film for many years but both films left a profound emotional effect on me. The Long Day Closes (as with Distant Voices) has quite a loose narrative structure and has no plot as such. It's more a kind of
meditation on memory, especially of childhood and working-class family life and it is quite heavy with nostalgia. In some sequences there is very little happening, becoming more abstract. But that's the beauty of it - it's deeply cinematic and it draws you into it's spell and I find it deeply moving. Terence Davies has only made a handful of films, I have only seen three and they are magnificent. The other film of his I have seen, The House of Mirth, he gave us a performance by Gillian Anderson that was so incredibly moving it made me realise how much she has been wasted all the years she was tied to playing Dana Skully in The X Files! I just wish Davies would make more films!
December 6, 2007
