Sun­set Song

Agy­ness Deyn is the star of Ter­ence Davies’ rhap­sod­ic Sun­set Song. As Chris Guthrie, she inhab­its the soul of this belea­guered waif. It’s a sen­sa­tion­al per­for­mance: gen­er­ous, ten­der and dis­creet­ly con­trolled. It’s due to her ethe­re­al pres­ence that we are plau­si­bly trans­port­ed back to the rolling farm­lands of ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry Scot­land. She is Lil­ian Gish in The Wind or Way Down East, her cap­ti­vat­ing inno­cence made to stand firm while under heavy fire. As she weeps, we weep with her. As it should be.

The film sees her rebuff­ing the tor­ments of dai­ly life with nary a pout, while accept­ing good for­tune with guard­ed cheer. Tears roll down her cheeks as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of her pain, her body lack­ing the resolve to hold them back. It’s under­stand­able con­sid­er­ing all she goes through – light­ly numbed to adver­si­ty and con­tent­ment both. Per­haps we could see her as a more melan­cholic and dain­ty ver­sion of Scar­lett O’Hara – both char­ac­ters cher­ish the land as a pre­serv­er of per­son­al his­to­ry. For them, a house is more than an ascetic domi­cile, it’s a spec­i­men jar filled with remem­brances. For Chris, the land­scape is an exten­sion of her very being, a tan­gi­ble mem­o­ry bank which remains stead­fast as fam­i­ly and friends are brought into the world and made to exit from it.

The way in which Deyn intones her nar­ra­tion is in itself a mar­vel of emo­tive enun­ci­a­tion. She speaks not as if address­ing a fig­u­ra­tive audi­ence, but as if she is recit­ing poet­ry in pri­vate. This acknowl­edge­ment of the story’s lit­er­ary roots is sug­ges­tive of a con­ceit that’s close to direc­tor Ter­ence Davies’ heart – that art and life are not mere­ly inex­tri­ca­ble from one anoth­er, but are the same thing. The sub­tle­ty with which this styl­is­tic gra­da­tion is exe­cut­ed exem­pli­fies how deeply Davies under­stands the medi­um. His process of adap­ta­tion isn’t mere­ly a case of prun­ing back a source to fit the screen, but ingest­ing it whole and pro­duc­ing a work that could only exist as a film. Deyn, it appears, is whol­ly sim­pati­co with this arti­san process.

Davies’ mas­ter­ful Sun­set Song offers a panoram­ic sur­vey of an era as direct­ly expe­ri­enced by a sin­gle per­son. Chris’ abu­sive father (Peter Mul­lan) dom­i­nates the film’s open­ing chap­ter, a quick-tem­pered man’s man who is so con­sumed by self-loathing that he dri­ves away those close to him. His wrath is lat­er dis­placed by the onset of World War One. The bru­tal­is­ing effects of the con­flict on her affec­tion­ate beau, Ewan Taven­dale (Kevin Guthrie), are brac­ing­ly felt through her restrict­ed per­spec­tive. Each scene segues into the next with a vaporous cross-dis­solve as time is seen to build and destroy, soft­ly, and with­out discrimination.

Chris los­es her fam­i­ly, acquires a new one and then los­es that as well. A sex­u­al awak­en­ing brings pos­si­bil­i­ty and dan­ger. The com­fort of fam­i­ly life brings more loved ones to be placed on the chop­ping block. Yet the film is nev­er morose, and she will­ing­ly adapts to the con­stant changes of sit­u­a­tion. She’s an opti­mist, though not to the point where she’s able to brush off tragedy and move on – she takes on knowl­edge with each new set­back, allow­ing it to make her stronger. Trite though it may sound, the immense pow­er of Sun­set Song derives from the insis­tence – via Davies and author Lewis Gras­sic Gib­bon, upon whose sub­lime Scot­tish pas­toral the film is based – that we must learn from the past with­out dwelling upon it.

The plush splen­dour of the land­scape is a ton­ic for Chris’ woes. It’s her one con­stant. Davies films exte­ri­ors in 65mm and cap­tures the idyl­lic rap­ture of gen­tly shim­mer­ing wheat fields but avoids undue roman­ti­ci­sa­tion. When Chris is indoors, the divine exte­ri­or light streams through the win­dow and onto her face. Kin­rad­die is a utopia worth defend­ing, which becomes the source of Chris’ most immense bout of suf­fer­ing when Ewan is called up to fight. And just as Davies opened out the closed roman­tic love-tri­an­gle in his pre­vi­ous film, The Deep Blue Sea, with a sin­gle track­ing shot down a crowd­ed Under­ground plat­form, he trans­forms Sun­set Song into a uni­ver­sal tale with a sin­gle over­head shot depict­ing the mud­dy detri­tus of the bat­tle field.

The film’s most beau­ti­ful moment, how­ev­er, serves to epit­o­mise a per­fect mar­riage between Davies’ naked­ly heart­felt sen­si­bil­i­ty and Deyn’s metic­u­lous­ly world­ly depic­tion of Chris. An extend­ed wed­ding sequence harks back to the liv­ing tableaux of films like Dis­tant Voic­es, Still Lives and The Long Day Clos­es, and it cli­max­es with Chris singing a song, a capel­la, to the tip­sy rev­ellers. It’s utter­ly trans­fix­ing, because of Chris’ brav­ery, and the rugged melo­di­ous­ness of her voice, but also the fact that this moment of ecsta­sy is tinged with a pal­pa­ble sad­ness. She loves Ewan, but under­stands that this state of bliss is transitory.