We fell hard for Terence Davies‘ Sunset Song this past TIFF, proclaiming the Lewis Grassic Gibson adaptation a triumph worthy of Dreyer, one containing “many compositions and gestures beyond just the easy-to-praise 70mm vistas [that] feel destined to replay forever and ever in the mind.” There’s a general consensus that it should be seen on a big screen, and so the pending theatrical release — further highlighted by this, a U.S. trailer — is one of 2016’s most-anticipated happenings.
While I’ll avoid this preview for hope of entering Davies’ film as blind as possible, feel free to partake for yourself. In the meantime, however, consider our review, which goes on to say, “The camera movements take on a sensitive quality (retracting during a rape scene), but also the same bittersweet nature that’s found when swooping through the spaces of Davies’ childhood spaces in the “Tammy” montage from The Long Day Closes. The film’s many dissolves function similarly, particularly on Chris and Ewan’s wedding day, in which a full house of attendees singing along quickly transitions to just the newlyweds serenading each other.”
Watch the trailer below (via Apple):
Synopsis:
Sunset Song is Terence Davies’ intimate epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War. A young woman’s endurance against the hardships of rural Scottish life, based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, told with gritty poetic realism by Britain’s greatest living auteur. The film takes place during the early years of the twentieth century, with the conflicts and choices a young woman experiences reflecting the struggle between tradition and change; a struggle that continues to resonate today. Set in a rural community, Sunset Song is driven by the young heroine Chris and her intense passion for life, for the unsettling Ewan and for the unforgiving land. The First World War reaches out from afar, bringing the modern world to bear on the community in the harshest possible way, yet in a final moment of grace, Chris endures, now a woman of remarkable strength who is able to draw from the ancient land in looking to the future. Sunset Song is at once epic in emotional scale and deeply romantic at its core, given power by Terence Davies’ unflinching poetic realism.
With Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, and Kevin Guthrie leading its cast, Sunset Song will enter a limited release on May 13.