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SUNSET SONG Send This Review to a Friend
First, there is good news for viewers of the engrossing, visually and spiritually stunning “Sunset Song,” set in a rural section of northern Scotland. It is been released with subtitles. When I first saw the film without them I missed huge chunks of the dialogue spoken authentically with the brogue of the area. The fortunate decision to provide subtitles makes a huge difference in getting the full impact of this remarkable film, directed by the renowned writer-director Terence Davies, who skillfully adapted the 1932 novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon into this compelling screen version.
The story, rooted in the years before World War I, has a strong-willed heroine, Chris Guthtrie, played to perfection by Agyness Deyn. Her life on a farm is a hard one, from which she yearns to escape, preferably by becoming a school teacher, a dream thwarted by the needs of working on the farm. Her father, John Guthrie (Peter Mullan), is a cruel S.O.B who rules with an iron hand over Chris, his wife and his son Will (Jack Greenlees). John beats Will mercilessly, and one feels especially for this victim of abuse.
What happens to these characters feeds the plot, but the film astutely meshes their lives with developments in the outside world that affect them. The outbreak of the war has a powerful impact. By this time Chris is married to a loving farmer, Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie), who doesn’t want to be considered a coward and slacker and heads off to fight, as do his friends. We watch the toll this takes on Chris as she struggles with her lot in life.
The film has the sweep of a novel, which gives it grandeur even though the style is simple and unadorned. The entire cast is excellent, as is the cinematography, and the subtitles give the story its clarity for audiences who would otherwise find much incomprehensible. A Magnolia Pictures release. Reviewed May 13, 2016.
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