Ter­ence Davies: ​‘I’ve got a huge amount of anger inside me’

After a stop-start career, Ter­ence Davies is sud­den­ly speed­ing. When LWLies met the direc­tor to talk about Sun­set Song, he revealed that his next film, A Qui­et Pas­sion, about the life of reclu­sive poet Emi­ly Dick­in­son, is in the can and his sub­se­quent project, adapt­ed from the book ​‘Moth­er of Sor­rows’ by Richard McCann, is whirring away.

LWLies: Where did you get all the mar­vel­lous rain in Sun­set Song?

Davies: We were based in Bal­later, a town in the east­ern part of the Cairn­gorms Nation­al park, due West of Aberdeen. It rains all the time but you can’t pho­to­graph ordi­nary rain. You have to sup­ple­ment it. You’re sit­ting in this tent – all this bloody rain, all this mud and you just think, ​‘This is not glam­orous. I’m sor­ry. It’s not glam­orous.’ You fin­ish a very ten­der scene in the barn and a horse farts and it’s an opin­ion, you can tell. It was mis­er­able phys­i­cal­ly. When we got to New Zealand, because we had to go some­where where there was sun­shine, they had the worst storms for 50 years. I thought, ​‘Oh ter­rif­ic. We’ve come to the oth­er side of the world. We could have stayed home and got this for free.’ Luck­i­ly the weath­er broke and we had three and a half days of won­der­ful sun­shine but there were times when you just thought, ​‘Oh god, why on earth are we doing it?’

How long was the shoot?

I think it was six weeks. We had very lit­tle mon­ey and it proved a lot of dif­fi­cul­ty. We all took a gam­ble. With­out that crew and that cast we couldn’t have got a film. I miss every­one. I just miss every­one! When they do won­der­ful things that you haven’t thought of, that’s just bliss.

Are you think­ing about any­thing in particular?

When Chris gets her bad news, I had just writ­ten, ​“It’s a lie,” and the rest of her dia­logue. She just kept on repeat­ing it. You don’t stop that because that’s fan­tas­tic! I wouldn’t have thought to keep on repeat­ing it. The actors do a great deal of work on their own and when it’s right you just have to let it go. And it’s riv­et­ing. Agy­ness Deyn gives a quite remark­able per­for­mance. So does Kevin Guthrie. When he says, ​“You’re always sniv­el­ling!” it just erupts from nowhere. Peter Mul­lan brought a great deal of warmth to his char­ac­ter which I didn’t see. He’s got a very melod­ic voice so at first it’s love­ly and warm, it’s ten­der and you think, ​‘Oh, what a nice dad.’ But you get on the wrong side of him and he’s a brute.

What did you leave out of Lewis Gras­sic Gibbon’s source novel?

There was the busi­ness of the girl that Will goes to see but that led us down a nar­ra­tive route that was dis­tract­ing. If she’s just left as some­one he goes to see [off-screen] and then he leaves, that’s the way a lot of things hap­pen in real life. They hap­pen out of the blue. There’s no prepa­ra­tion for them. The prob­lem with some sto­ries is they explain why this has hap­pened. Life isn’t like that. I remem­ber one of my broth­ers, now dead, com­ing and say­ing, ​‘I’ve joined the army for 22 guinea.’ I just remem­ber feel­ing so dev­as­tat­ed. It just destroyed some­thing inside me. That came out of the blue.

So we’re unpre­pared for life when it happens?

There’s this idiot idea – it’s an Amer­i­can idea – that we con­trol our life. Of course we don’t! We’re at the vagaries of every­thing out there. You may be able to con­trol how clean your body is and how clean the flat is but that’s about where it ends. We are at the mer­cy of life and life is arbi­trary. It’s com­plete­ly arbi­trary. Why do some peo­ple sud­den­ly get some awful dis­ease and die at 54? Why? There’s noth­ing we can do about it and it’s real­ly fool­ish to think that we con­trol our lives because we don’t.

One way you can con­trol your life is to lock your­self away from it.

Even then, it doesn’t work. Life has a way of unlock­ing the door and get­ting in. It hap­pened with Emi­ly Dick­in­son. She locked her­self away from the world but you can’t lock life out. You just can’t. You can­not do it. My moth­er had the right atti­tude. She was sto­ic – not in the old Greek sense but, ​‘These are the cards I’ve been giv­en, I’ll make the best of them.’ If you’ve got that atti­tude, I think you’re alright. That’s some kind of safe­ty net. Once you start think­ing you can con­trol things, well, that’s the way to madness.

Peter Mullan’s char­ac­ter tries to con­trol his fam­i­ly and it turns him into a monster.

You can’t con­trol peo­ple by fear, or you can only do it for a cer­tain length of time. My father was very vio­lent and he died in agony, I’m glad to say, because he made our lives misery.

What’s the lega­cy of that?

The lega­cy of that is that I’ve got a huge amount of anger inside me. I very rarely lose my tem­per because I’m fero­cious when I do. I don’t like to lose it but when I do… there’s an old Chi­nese say­ing, ​‘Beware the wrath of the patient man.’ I’m not afraid of any­body. I was bul­lied for four years when I was at sec­ondary school. You have all your esteem beat­en out of you. If I think anybody’s try­ing to bul­ly me now, I real­ly do go off at the deep end because I won’t be bul­lied any more. I just won’t. That’s part of me. Also in me is the need to please and some­times I think, ​‘Oh for good­ness sake, stop doing it. Peo­ple will make their own mind up. They don’t need you to cosy them along.’

Are there any more films drawn from your own expe­ri­ence inside you?

Cer­tain­ly no more auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal films but I think as my man­ag­er said A Qui­et Pas­sion is my most auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal one. I real­ly did feel that sym­bi­ot­ic towards Emi­ly Dickinson.