{"id":794,"date":"2017-05-06T07:27:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T07:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/2017\/05\/06\/httptheblurb-com-aureviewssunset-song-movie-review\/"},"modified":"2017-05-06T07:27:44","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T07:27:44","slug":"httptheblurb-com-aureviewssunset-song-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/httptheblurb-com-aureviewssunset-song-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunset Song – movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greek tragedy done Scottish style, Sunset Song<\/i> is tortuous to sit through. This is Terence Davies\u2019 (Distant Voices, Still Lives<\/i>) intimate epic of tragedy and love set at the dawn of the Great War. It is about a young woman\u2019s endurance against the hardships of rural Scottish life, based on a novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and told with gritty poetic realism.<\/p>\n

\"Sunset-Song-01\"So, to the detail … 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. Set in the rural community of Aberdeenshire, Sunset Song <\/i>is driven by the young heroine Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn) and her intense passion for life, for the unsettling young farmer Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie) and for the unforgiving land.\u00a0 Chris is one of six children to John Guthrie (Peter Mullan); an authoritarian, mean-tempered father who treats his wife and eldest son Will (Jack Greenlees) particularly harshly. When mother passes away, two of the younger children go to live with their aunt and uncle in Aberdeen, leaving Chris and Will and her father to run the farm. Eventually, Chris marries Ewan \u2013 the pair very much in love. But that isn\u2019t bound to last as the First World War breaks out and there is pressure on Ewan to enlist, which he does; but is brutalised by his army experience.<\/p>\n

Sunset Song<\/i> takes work on the part of the audience. I can\u2019t say you come out feeling great because the subject matter is so dour. It is made all the more difficult because the film unfolds at such a slow pace, with the beautiful Scottish countryside not enough to quicken the heart. While you can admire Chris for putting up with such a troubled life for so long, I was also left asking: why didn\u2019t she turn tail and run? A clever and diligent teenager, for a time she had ambition to be a teacher.<\/p>\n