Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988): Takes You Back

I’ve become, of late, a fan of British director Terence Davies. I wrote enthusiastically about The Long Day Closes, a few months ago, and commend that review to you if you haven’t read it. Since then, prompted by the upcoming Davies retrospective at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive (Terence Davies: Cinema, Memory, Emotion running August 19-27, 2017), I’ve seen two more – his most recent movie, A Quiet Passion (2017), about the life of the 19^th century American poet Emily Dickenson, and Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), Davies’ first feature length film and the predecessor to The Long Day Closes.

All three of these Davies pictures are visually lovely and stimulating, both emotionally and intellectually.  I heartily recommend them to anyone who seriously loves movies. – with the qualification that they are not for the impatient. All three will be screened at the PFA event , along with Of Time and the City (2008) Davies’ uniquely personal documentary about Liverpool, his home town.

This review will focus on Distant Voices, Still Lives. 

Davies is a cinematic poet of memory and muted yet deep emotion. His approach to filmmaking is iconoclastic: proceeding slowly and methodically in a montage style, built on an accumulation of vignettes: tableaus, conversations, private moments, family gatherings, incidents that objectively may seem of little consequence, yet are recalled in retrospect as redolent with personal meaning. In his memoir films in particular, the images are coupled with an evocative soundtrack of popular tunes, movie themes, church hymns, and other era-specific music.   Taken together, these scenes recreate a time, place and mood, eliciting in the viewer (this one at least) a deep sense of empathy for and understanding of the characters. 

In The Long Day Closes, possibly his greatest film, Davies used these techniques to look back at a   turning point in his own childhood: the calm before the storm, a nearly idyllic time (in retrospect) when he could still feel comforted and comfortable in the bosom of his family, just before the full-blown onset of puberty, the horror (for him) of adolescence, and the difficult life beyond.The earlier Distant Voices, Still Lives, incorporates similar techniques in service of a different, although related story.

Both films signal at the outset that we are in for a walk down memory lane. In The Long Day Closes, Davies does this by starting with a static shot of a vase of red roses, and as the opening credits roll by the bouquet slowly ages before our eyes. The theme of time passing by is then underscored in the opening moments of the film itself as Davies' camera pans slowly into a long neglected vacant house to a ruined, dreary inside stairway, which then transforms into carpeted stairs on which our ten year old protagonist sits in a cozy little home, conversing with his unseen Mum. The earlier Distant Voices skips the roses but begins with the very same carpeted staircase. Mum’s voice calls the children to tea, and although the stairs remain vacant in our view, we hear each of the three kids (or rather the ghosts of the young people they once were) coming down to join her in the adjacent room.

Both movies are situated in Davies’ hometown of Liverpool.  The Long Day Closes is set in the mid-1950’s; Distant Voices, Still Lives takes place in the immediate post-war years from the mid-1940’s through the early 1950's. Whereas The Long Day Closes is chiefly about Davies’ childhood (his character is thinly fictionalized as “Bud”) with his mother and a couple of older siblings in supporting roles, there is no Terence or “Bud” in Distant Voices. That movie’s focus is on three older siblings, two sisters and a brother – all in their late teens and early adulthood, and their mother and father. As such, it is a little less personal, but only a little. It is an intimate portrait of a time, a place and the director's family (or a portion of it). 

Born in 1945, the youngest of ten children, Davies was raised in a catholic, working class family, with a mercurial, often brutal father and, from Davies’ perspective at least, a saintly persevering mother. His father died when Davies was quite small, which is one reason he does not figure into The Long Day Closes – at least not directly. He was apparently such a force of nature, however, that through Davies’ own early experiences and an infiltration from the experiences of his Mum and other members of the family, Dad was a haunting presence in Davies’ life.

Father (Pete Postlethwaite, in a striking, brilliant performance) is certainly a force - not only in life but in death as well in Distant Voices, Still Lives.  But he is hardly one dimensional. We see a fearsome, violent man certainly, yet one who is also remembered as caring and kind in some moments. For example, there’s a remarkable, beautiful flashback sequence (played out to the soothing strains of  Benjamin Britten’s “A Hymn to the Virgin”) in which one of the kids recalls Father lighting candles in church on Christmas Eve with Mother and the children, then at home decorating their little tree, and later tiptoeing into the kids’ room to gently whisper a sweet goodnight. The very next scene begins as a tableau -- literally – with the three young children (all under ten in this memory) sitting at table one evening (perhaps it’s Christmas day) with Father at the head and a frosted home-baked cake, a plate of cookies, tea cups on saucers, plates and silverware on a white table cloth … waiting quietly, waiting presumably for Mother to join them. Dad begins to twitch, slowly seething, then violently explodes – sending the cakes, plates, tablecloth, everything to the floor, then bellowing to his unseen wife, “Clean this up!!”

Mother (Freda Dowie) is warm, protective, encouraging, and beloved by her kids. She manages to remain steadfast in the face of a frequently abusive husband. She probably felt she had no other choice, and that well may have been true. At one point her nearly adult daughter asks, “Why did you marry him?”  Mother pauses a moment, then wistfully replies,” He was nice. He was a good dancer.”  So it goes, right?  Mother is a steadying influence, at least for the children, and she holds the family together.

But it’s Father and the long shadow he casts that holds Distant Voices, Still Lives together. It’s largely because of him that this film has many more dramatic moments than The Long Day Closes. His abusive treatment of Mother forms one big part of this, and thankfully, it does not take many scenes to get the point across.  Then there is Father’s stormy relationship with his son Tony (Dean Williams). One evening when Tony is just nine or ten, Father angrily locks him out of the house for some infraction, exclaiming “There’s no place for you here!” forcing the child to seek refuge elsewhere; another time, an older Tony comes home, in uniform during the war, just to see his Dad, who refuses even to speak to him – all of which Tony recalls bitterly after Father’s death. With his daughters he is strict and easy to anger, but not quite so rough; but bearing witness to their father’s abuse of their mother and brother all their lives was no doubt traumatizing enough.  As Part 1 of the picture ends, there’s the drama of the once feared, all-powerful Father stricken, gravely ill, lying quietly in hospital as the family gathers round, each with their complicated angry, sorrowful and even tender memories of the man. The oldest daughter, Eileen (Angela Walsh), bursts into tears at her wedding, shortly after Father's death, crying “I wish Dad was here.”

Distant Voices, Still Lives is split into two sections, thus the dual title. It was filmed in two parts, two years apart, with Part 1 (Distant Voices) set at the time of Father’s illness and death, albeit featuring frequent flashback recollections by Mother and the children sparked by this fateful, cathartic event. Part 2 (Still Lives) begins a couple years later, as all struggle into adulthood and marriage. Times are tough in the early Fifties, and options – for mates, jobs, upward mobility - are limited for Liverpool folk, perhaps more so for these arguably damaged siblings. All three eventually marry. The younger, more vivacious daughter, Maisie (Lorraine Ashbourne), gives birth to a daughter and struggles with a less than ideal husband, George (Vincent Maguire).

Still, in the numerous gatherings of friends and family – sometimes in pubs, often at someone’s home -  people put on a happy face, despite their hardships. For entertainment they sing, and more often than not the other party-goers join in. Cheap entertainment, and fun too. This was still before rock’n’roll hit the charts, a few years before Cliff Richard and a few more before The Beatles, so we’re talking Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood songs, like Buttons and Bows, If You Knew Suzie, Roll Out the Barrel, I Wanna Be Around, and even My Yiddishe Mama (!). Characters also hum snippets of favorite melodies to themselves and in one instance a musical phrase becomes a greeting between BFFs. There are also popular recordings on the soundtrack by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald. These songs express what oftentimes the characters can’t – and are a key part of the experience of Distant Voices, Still Lives.

Ella’s number (Taking A Chance On Love) is an ironic comment on a scene of domestic violence. But most of the music lifts us up. One of the loveliest, most evocative scenes in the film starts with the soaring strains of the Oscar winning song Love Is A Many Splendored Thing, as the camera takes us through a pouring rain into a packed theater, which happens to be screening that 1955 hit movie, slowly panning across the audience until we spot the sisters Maisie and Eileen, near the back, bawling their eyes out at the bittersweet romance. Without their knowing it, tragedy is striking outside at the same time. As I said, life is tough.      

The acting is solid throughout, with Postlethwaite a standout, as I’ve mentioned. Another standout is Debi Jones as Micky, Eileen’s spirited best friend and an irrepressible breath of fresh air in every scene she’s in.  

Still, this is Writer/Director Terence Davies’ film all the way. While stylistically similar to The Long Day Closes, it’s not quite as polished, nor as deeply, dreamily personal. But Distant Voices, Still Lives is a great film in its own right. To quote critic Jonathan Rosenblum, “Great films have a way of imposing their own laws and definitions that ordinary descriptions can’t reach.” Another way of saying this is that my review does not do Distant Voices, Still Lives justice; you really have to see the movie to appreciate it.  

The difficulty is that Distant Voices, Still Lives is hard to get hold of. But it is available on a few streaming services (see below)  It is showing on the big screen Sunday August 20, 2017 at BAMPFA in Berkeley as part of their Davies festival. If you are in the Bay Area, that'd be a great way too see it. 

80 Minutes.

Grade:  A

View at home free with a subscription tom Fandor; or rent on Amazon, AppleTV and perhaps some other services [check around].