[THE LONG DAY CLOSES screens Saturday July 14th at 5:15 pm and Sunday July 15th at 6:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
English filmmaker Terence Davies is not
terribly prolific, but, rather like American namesake Terence
Malik, has compensated with a unique style and thoughtful maturity
that rewards the viewer for any overly long intervals between
features. THE LONG DAY CLOSES (1992), a heavily
autobiographical story of a sensitive boy growing up in Liverpool not
long after WWII, is my favorite of what I've seen of his work, and
like his breakthrough DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES - an
art-house darling in its day - has very little of a strong
forward-motion narrative; it was mainly about moods and emotion.
THE LONG DAY CLOSES, a sort-of sequel, is even more
refined, verging on very nearly plotless. Yet I dug it.
The hero, Davies' alter ego, is an
introspective, slightly gawky (in a Crispin Gloverish way)
11-year-old Liverpuddlian named Buddy (Leigh McCormack), who
rarely speaks. In these enlightened days they'd diagnose him
with autism/Asperger's and pump so many drugs into him that he'd
become an addict trying to eat his mum's face, and his family would
be in debt to the medical establishment forever and no later film
career, nosiree... Fortunately for Buddy/Davies he's living instead
in darkest 1950s England, a far less sophisticated era. There are
bare cupboards, severe rationing and postwar economic
deprivation (don't worry, those days of austerity look to be coming
back).
Relief, for Buddy, anyway, comes in the
form of a low-intensity media barrage, of bits of pop songs (Nat King
Cole, Debbie Reynolds), radio broadcasts, hymns, music-hall
entertainers, an idyllic family closeness, church, and, of course,
cinema. Buddy starts attending a chilly-looking Catholic school - and
brings home a bad case of head lice as a result - but can still find
refuge in the imagery and sensations offered at the neighborhood
movie palace, among other diversions.
The non-storyline is a reverie-like
procession of imagery, very nicely capturing the way things seem
remembered through a childhood POV of amber-colored nostalgia more so
than the truth. Over the visuals - one is nothing more than sunlight
slowly creeping across the texture of a well-worn family carpet - is
lain an exquisite sound design. Talk among the characters is only
muffled chatter; what stands out clearly are the melodies and
snatches of movie-dialogue excerpts, from GREAT EXPECTATIONS,
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, THE LADYKILLERS, or whatever
else is playing at the local odeon (or in Buddy's head) as a
sort of interior mixtape. Actually the movie takes place as much
in church as in the movie theaters, and it doesn't take much
imagination to guess that Davies views them as much the same thing
(wonder if Scientology ever scouted him out?).
With locations shifting and blending
into each other with slow pans and dissolve-edits, this short feature
feels like one long continuous sequence, really, wandering into
Davies' waking-dream memories, and for the duration its a
beautiful and bittersweet place to be. It doesn't so much reach a
climax as just arbitrarily stop at one point, and I know that for a
lot of viewers weaned on comic-book blockbusters THE
LONG DAY CLOSES will seem like well-acted wallpaper. I cannot
argue with that, but I liked the picture anyway, sue me. (3 out
of 4 stars)
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