The Long Day Closes
Aug 10 - Aug 16, 2012
(Terence Davies, UK, 1992, 35mm, 85 min)
New 35mm Print!
20th Anniversary!
Terence Davies' career-long, autobiographical exploration of working-class family life in northern England in the mid-1950s continued with his 1992 Cannes Film Festival Entry, The Long Day Closes.
Lush images of shabby surroundings give viewers a look through the imagination of Bud, the film’s 11-year-old protagonist, whose youthful sensitivity is nurtured by his loving mother and siblings. In spite of his family’s warmth, he remains a solitary, pubescent figure whose first moments of homosexual desire conflict with the weight of his Catholic upbringing. Davies’ impressionistic, nearly non-narrative style allows Bud’s loneliness to gestate within an intimate poetry of images as he absorbs and makes sense of his shifting reality.
“A poet of memory and recreation whose approach fuses painterly composition and musical flow, Davies addresses the past not with a nostalgist's doting tidiness, but with a sense of fluid emotions perpetually at play; far from collections of pinned-down poses, his cinematic photograph albums shiver with anger and love, sorrow and hope.” –Slate