Plot
Set in 1940s England, Distant Voices/Still Lives is a compassionate look at a radically dysfunctional family. The son and his mother must endure the casual and overt cruelties of the bull-necked father. The ongoing abuse takes its toll in the form of failed marriages and misguided attempts at seeking security outside the family unit. As was the case with his earlier short subject trilogy (The Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration), director Terence Davies based much of the material on his own life, combining rheumy-eyed cynicism with soft-edged nostalgia (the musical track, drawn from popular wartime songs, is particularly evocative). ~ Hal Erickson, RoviReview
Terence Davies' semi-autobiographical first full-length feature announced the arrival of a unique talent, one who would fuse the lyrical, poetic style of such maverick directors as Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway with the kitchen-sink melodrama endemic to the majority of postwar British cinema. Distant Voices, Still Lives unfolds with the ease of a memoir, yet there's nothing literal or obvious about it. Davies is much more interested in the signifiers of nostalgia and memory than the memories themselves: dramatic, often violent episodes are doled out in vignettes, interrupted or underscored by extensive use of pop songs of the era. But the music provides no solace from the grim goings-on of the intentionally anonymous family Davies chronicles; although the characters are all given brief respites from their unending, sepia-toned misery, the director undercuts any threat of treacly, romanticized revisionism. Instead, Davies subtly suggests the ways that family members prop each other up, cut each other down, and weather the storm of their upbringing, and,in doing so, his film acquires a cumulative sense of hope and understanding. ~ Michael Hastings, RoviCast
- Freda Dowie - Mother
- Pete Postlethwaite - Father
- Angela Walsh - Eileen
- Dean Williams - Tony
- Lorraine Ashbourne - Maisie
Credit
Miki van Zwanenberg - Art Director, Monica Howe - Costume Designer, Andy Powell - First Assistant Director, Terence Davies - Director, William Diver - Editor, Colin MacCabe - Executive Producer, Lesley Lawson-Rouvray - Makeup, Jocelyn James - Production Designer, Miki van Zwanenberg - Production Designer, William Diver - Cinematographer, Patrick Duval - Cinematographer, Olivia Stewart - Production Manager, Jennifer Howarth - Producer, Colin MacCabe - Producer, Richard Robert - Special Effects, Moya Burns - Sound/Sound Designer, Colin Nicolson - Sound/Sound Designer, Alf Joint - Stunts, Terence Davies - Screenwriter| Distant Trumpet (1952 Film), Distant Tremors (2008 Film) | |
| Distilled Love (1919 Film), Distinto Amanecer (1944 Film) |
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