STILL LIVES DISTANT VOICES Movie Review

This autobiographical work from England's Terence Davies is constructed as a series of living tableaux ripped freshly bleeding yet ominously tranquil from the memory of a child growing up in a working class family in the 1940s and 1950s. The brutality of Davies's father (Pete Postlethwaite) is presented without anesthesia, though the antidotes seen in the film range from the family's regular attendance at the pub—with songs of the era making a stinging yet poignant counterpoint to the father's savagery—to the young protagonist's desperate escape to the dream families of Hollywood at the local movie house. Some of this film's set pieces—the mother's bruises unblinkingly photographed by a gliding, tracking camera to the tune of “Taking a Chance on Love”—are unforgettably moving and almost shockingly brave. In one's heart of hearts it must be admitted that this is indeed a musical, the likes of which has never been seen before. Bravo. (A sequel, The Long Day Closes, was finished six years later, in 1993.)

NEXT STOP … The Long Day Closes, The Neon Bible

1988 87m/C GB Freda Dowie, Pete Postlethwaite, Angela Walsh, Dean Williams, Lorraine Ashbourne; D: Terence Davies; W: Terence Davies; C: Patrick Duval. Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards '89: Best Foreign Film. VHS, LV ART