'Sunset Song' Review
Sunset Song is a deeply poetic period piece that struggles with consistency. At times, director Terence Davies, a filmmaker not unused to delving into history, captures an intimate or troubling moment in a way that can only be described as brilliant. Other times, however, his latest work devolves into something too melodic, too weepy, and almost melodramatic.
The film is based off Lewis Grassic Gibbon's book of the same name, a novel thought to be one of the most important in 20th Century Scottish literature. As such, Davies's film is set in Scotland just before the start of World War I. Our hero is a young girl named Chris, played with gusto by Ayness Deyn. A natural poet, Chris yearns to be a school teacher, and yet she is torn -- between her rough but beloved Scottish roots and language and the British culture she studies and in whose administration she wishes to work.
Sunset Song chronicles her late girlhood in a home run by a terrible father and her marriage to a young man who is humiliated into joining the war effort against Germany. Both episodes are tragedies. The point is, however, that Chris endures, drawing strength from the Scottish landscape and traditions, folk songs in particular. Deyn captures this strength wonderfully, even if some of her voice-over prose narrations, which are peppered throughout the film, are literary in the worst sense.
Indeed, while Sunset Song is often lyrial -- even sublimely so -- sometimes it's yearning for poetry produces a lethargic, flowery quality. It's not something that induces eyerolls, but instead puts one to sleep. In contrast, there are moments of quiet rage in Sunset Song that are immensely unnerving. One such scene is a long take of Chris' brother being lashed by their father. The suffering in the film, through Davis' lens, takes on a religious quality.
It should be noted that that subtitles are required. While the movie is in English, the Scottish accents are so thick and the diction so regional that without them most Americans would be lost. That said, the music of the words is a total delight. Indeed, the film, while it sometimes wades into waters too sentimental and gets carried away in its love for folk songs, is undeniably rich. The language, the landscapes, the earth are all central, so much so as to be characters in their own right. As such, we easily realize how Chris finds inspiration in them.
Sunset Song</em> is playing at the Lagoon Cinema.
