Sunset Song

Drama film

Sunset Song is Terence Davies’ intimate epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War.

Set in a rural community, is driven by the young heroine Chris and her intense passion for , for the unsettling Ewan and for the unforgiving land. The First World War reaches out from afar, bringing the modern world to bear on the community in the harshest possible way, yet in a final moment of grace, Chris endures, now a woman of remarkable strength who is able to draw from the ancient land in looking to the future.

Sunset Song is Terence Davies' intimate epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War.

Sunset Song is Terence Davies' intimate epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT – TERENCE DAVIES

It is thirty years ago now. When the Sunday night serial on BBC1 went out in ancient Black & White. “Sunset Song” by was one of them and its grandeur has stayed with me. It is a dark and brooding about the Scottish peasantry, about the land in general and one family – The Guthries – in particular. They are subsistence farmers extracting a meager living from the earth.

It is a novel about the power and cruelty of both family and Nature, about the enduring presence of the land and the courage of the human spirit in the face of hardship. Against this background – but of equal stature – is the story of the daughter of the family,

Chris Guthrie and her evolution from schoolgirl to wife to mother to widow then finally becoming a symbol for Scotland itself. The novel is both symbolic and rhapsodic. It is a work of epic intimacy set before, during and after The Great War.

Yet it is delicate.

A filigree of the music of the seasons together with the more modest music of pipes and accordion, played at weddings with the Scottish voices singing the melancholy airs of the old times – “THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST” and “AULD ROBIN”; songs to pull the heartstrings, to make you remember the long-dead, making you wish for the longed-for happiness which we all need – content and secure in the knowledge that we will never die…for we are young and in our prime.

But time is cruel and so is the land which gives life its harsh beauty, as well as its moments of epiphany beside the lamp or in the firelight at gloaming. The song is yours and mine, of all who feel and have suffered or been happy. It is the song heard with quiet courage in the face of death. Or life.

But Chris has a deeper insight, an innate wisdom. Chris sings the Song of the Earth for humanity, a rhapsody for us all as she charts the eternal cycle of birth, marriage and death. As the song explores the timeless mysteries of land, home and family – this last one being the greatest mystery of all. For the family contains all our greatest ecstasies and all our cherished terrors.

The book is suffused with a lyrical melancholy, a quiet threnody for the mystery of life…for life is a mystery contained within an enigma.

How can we bear time or subdue nature?

We cannot.

We can only endure.

At the end of the work a remembrance parade and service is held in an attempt to heal all suffering. At the end of this great work time and the land endure beyond war, beyond human suffering even beyond life itself.

It is a story which deserves to be told.

TERENCE DAVIES

Share this article: Sunset Song

Facebook
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Pinterest
Twitter
Email

MORE TOPICS

Horrible Bosses

Horrible Bosses is a black comedy film directed by Seth Gordon and starring Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Jason Sudeikis, and Kevin Spacey, and funded by Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA), FFF Bayern, and Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC).

On trouvera une analyse de l'esthétique des films de Wes Craven dans Le Cinéma d'horreur et ses figures (Paris, PUF, 2005), qui montre comment les films de ce réalisateur sont ordonnés autour d'une réflexion sur « les puissances de l'image ».

Wes Craven

Wesley Earl “Wes” Craven (born August 2, 1939) is an American film director and writer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

The Purge: Anarchy

The new story follows an unlikely group of five citizens who, over the course of the night, find out just how far they will go to protect themselves and, ultimately, each other, as they fight to survive a night fraught with impossible decisions.

RoboCop

In RoboCop, the year is 2028. When Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) – a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit – is critically injured, OmniCorp grabs their chance to build a part-man, part-robot police officer.

The Intern

In “The Intern,” De Niro stars as Ben Whittaker, a 70-year-old widower who has discovered that retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Seizing an opportunity to get back in the game, he becomes a senior intern at an online fashion site, founded and run by Jules Ostin (Hathaway).

Behind the Scenes: The Life of an Actor Off Camera

So the next time we applaud an enthralling performance, it is important to remember the drill that goes behind this on-screen magic. The life of an actor off camera plunges into the deeper realm of perseverance, humanity, creativity, and resilience.