Distant Voices, Still Lives

Very (consciously) stilted, very fragmented, very fond of singing. Davies' affectionate gaze at his "ordinary joes" trigger a few moments of curious beauty, but this really wasn't my cup of tea. The assured and poetic direction doesn't bear any fruit for me... This was very unaffecting stuff. Formally impressive in a certain regard, of course, but pretty uninteresting regardless.

I can absolutely see how someone could love this, it's creatively edited, has a unique desaturated colour palette, mixes quirky humour with harsh sentimentality and feels very human while being heavily stylized. I, on the other hand, did not find this combination of styles and methods at all endearing. They clash and act as a barrier between the viewer and the characters making the light moments unbearably annoying while the heavy moments left me cold.

(Viewed on 27/05/14): Davies' forays into traditional dramaturgy over the last two decades have been deeply disappointing given how intimate and downright distinctive his early films were. His work has always been marked by a certain (bourgeois?) affectation, but on D.V.S.L it comes from an intensely personal place. In a similar fashion to The Long Day Closes, Davies mines his childhood memories to create a rich melancholy meditation on time and memory that's both tender and brutal.

How the hell do you express what exactly is so cool about Terence Davies in one of these teeny little 500-character reviews?! This sort of kitchen-sink stuff is about as plain and as much-done a subject as you can get, but Davies's unique style -- dollops of music, deliberate pace, disconnective editing style, and painterly visuals -- make it fascinating to watch. Maybe it's not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it's a unique contribution to movies-as-art that I'm glad I saw

i was playing a chess tournament in liverpool once when a woman somehow locked her keys in her car, and a pair of good scouse samaritans walked by who happened to have "a master key which opens any lock" and helpfully retrieved them. gotta love liverpool.

A back-and-forth, here-and-there swirl of rosey haze impressions. The good with the bad, sometimes the very bad. Gestures, places that spark the senses and stir remembrance. Sounds from one echo into the next, and the strongest nostalgic pleasures are often musical. As successfully as any other filmmaker - more so, perhaps - Terence Davies is able to kindle the sensation of memory, the vague medley of moments which cohere into a life lived.

So annoying

I think I get it, but I didn't like it.

Great movie!

Every frame is filled with a simultaneous joy and grief of loss - lost childhood, lost place, lost time. The beauty in fragments. I do think Davies improves even more with his next feature, but this is not lacking in beauty (even if it is perhaps a bit too lean). The "Love is a Many-Splendoured Thing" sequence is a highlight for me.

not my cup of tea

As Margaret Pomeranz says, this film leaves you wanting to be left alone to hold onto and hug this monumental and personal piece of work you just saw. There's a very characteristic way this film plays out -- it's at most times poetic, even pretentious, as if it's posing for a photo. Yet this makes the film all the more engaging and authentic, rather than distant itself away from the viewer. It's non-linear, but has a majestic structure, showing its characters in all sorts of different lights.

# 420

a very sad feeling stayed with me after watching the movie maybe because of the feeling of melancholia emaneting from the time passing by. it's like a fragmented and reduced narrative version of ozu.

Film as memory as sing-along? Good, but not really my cup of tea.

Film as memory, intensely personal and supposedly almost autobiographical, whereas The Long Day Closes focuses largely on Davies' childhood this film focuses more on the people around him as he grew up. It mixes joy and pain in an incredibly effective manner and manages to capture so much of life under its poetic gaze.

I prefer the lyrical, fragmented, poetic tone of Davies’ work to just about any other kitchen sink drama filmmaker ever. The moments he catches just feel so profound and moving. This is an extremely sad movie but it never tips over into complete despair. The use of music is exceptional. I just like it a lot okay

şarkılar ve sesler üzerinden çok güzel işler yaıyor. hüzünlü bir film.

By far a perfect, well rounded film, Terrence Davies 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' is an ode to the tragedies and pleasures of being human.

456

Davies crafts a film of impeccable attentiveness to details. The mise-en-scene is extremely artificial, ordered, but it doesn't feel like that apart from the rigid colour scheme. I can appreciate these things but I didn't really like the look of the film, mostly due to the washed out look. The rather Proustian narrative structure wins me over, and good non-diegetic music. Goddamn singing though...

Visually, it's neat, but the singing gets to be almost oppressive after a while.

Simulates the stirring of memory (by song or photograph) as well as any movie ever made. It's gorgeous, sad, redemptive.

The small stories inside are generally interesting (my favorite was the random uncle popping in midway) but the non-linear structure really forces you to pay attention to a lot of detail and a lot of characters. The earliest scenes felt the strongest, with some tapering off after the stories with the father. I'm not at all musical (nor is my family) so the songs didn't really trigger anything for me (other than a hope I don't marry into this sing-at-the-drop-of-a-hat sort of family).

gets me

The structure is a series of brief episodes, in a rather unchronological order during the first half, and more linear in the second. It's an intriguing set-up but the subject matter is so familiar that it doesn't feel as fresh as it should. What stands out more is the use of music, as these folks are constantly entertaining each other or getting their minds off some unpleasant business by belting out a tune. All in all, it didn't knock my socks off, but it's a good film with strong performances.

Fuck all the random songs, ciggies, bevvies, tellies, ta-ras and tuppences.

"Blimey, you're not singing again, are you?"

"There's no MGM musical scored to a gay romance, you know?" illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2014/09/episode-30-first-terence-davies-episode.html

An impressionistic memory film, based on the director's family memories and history. The film's rich humanity and its unique use of a robust musical score overcome its cynicism. Offbeat and original.

"Not the least among its achievements, Terence Davies's wondrous Distant Voices, Still Lives offers a crystallization of the appeal of the musical." - Fernando F. Croce

Another beautifully composed series of memories which slowly fade in and out accompanied by an evocative soundtrack.

I never thought I'd see a film that felt like it was about to die, as opposed to wanting to be put out of its misery like Freddy Got Fingered. You can thank this film for bringing us Pete Postlethwaite the same way you can thank Die Hard for bringing us Alan Rickman.

Different. Non-linear, meandering, has the most singing you'll ever see in a non-musical film, but what it lacks in unified plot it makes up for in mood and interesting little narrative bits and pieces.

507

Striking highs of feeling and camerawork -as in all Davies I've seen-, but if you need cohesion or a linear plot, go look somewhere else. Not his best package of tricks.

Amazingly captures a time and place, and hit me emotionally in ways I found surprising. The film is about memories and the way they're connected, framed around a family with a complicated dynamic and their triumphs and losses. Very episodic and nonlinear, it has good performances all around with very good casting. The singing gets to be overbearing, though. I would have liked more balance in that regard. An excellent film, though.

#508

A beautiful slice-of-life, stream of consciousness drama. Distant Voices, Still Lives offers more hope than the closed circuit of despair and death of Davies' Trilogy. Special mention to cinematographers William Diver and Patrick Duval, who utilize the quotidian to create an extraordinary visual landscape.