SUNSET SONG
Director: Terence Davies
Cast: Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, Kevin Guthrie
Rating: (M)
Two and a half stars (out of five)
It surprised me that I wasn’t much enamoured with Sunset Song, which has all the good intentions in the world, along with some beautiful cinematography shot partly in Canterbury and a likeable lead performance from model-turned-actor Agyness Deyn.
Adapted from Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel, it focuses on Chris Guthrie, a bonny lass coming of age in the grim countryside of northeast Scotland just prior to World War 1.
She yearns to become a teacher and escape her life of rural drudgery, which includes a callous, violent bully for a father who routinely abuses his wife and children. Unsurprisingly he’s played by Peter Mullan, who appears to have made a career out of variations on this character.
The first hour or so feels like a checklist of sombre cliches: rape, suicide, illness, death, toiling in the mud, overcoming adversity, impromptu folk songs, brutish men, more toiling ... all filmed in stunning 70mm (the windswept cornfields do look amazing).
Things pick up for Chris, and the viewer, when she’s wooed by handsome suitor Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie), who seems like an awright gadge. They marry, have a child, then he inexplicably comes back from the war a violent bully and, well, history repeats itself.
Many people will love this, but I found it overlong, underwhelming, poorly staged to a sometimes unintentionally comic degree, and seemingly edited by a somnambulist.
Admittedly, it does make a very successful attempt at evoking the harsh bleakness and cruel beauty of its time and place.
