It's pure Terence Davies, yet also worthy of the very best of John Ford.
There's a sequence in Sunset Song which is blessed with one of the most moving series of images and sounds that you're likely to see in any films - period. We're faced with a myriad of life's moments with Davies's masterly direction: a deliriously romantic exchange amidst a sea of sheep, a glorious wedding sequence and barn dance, the cruelties of shell shock and the horrors of war.
Never has an on-screen courtship been sweeter and the love experienced by the young man and woman beats its heart constantly through joyous events, strife and hardships of the most devastating order and beyond. Davies charges this simple, yet complex tale with an astonishing mise en scène. What's precious about her life is about to flip topsy turvy, but her strength, indomitable courage and intelligence will constantly be set upon the greatest of life's challenges.
Though her dreams of teacher's college were dashed, she discovers that her real dream consists of a deep love for the land, its people and the sweet-faced kindness offered by marrying a handsome, caring young man. As she always has, she fights back against the unfairness and evil of patriarchy. Upon the matriarch's death, Daddy Dearest gets a stroke and attempts to demand sexual favours from his only daughter. Her father is a brute who physically abuses his eldest son and demands constant sex from his wife, turning her into a breeding machine long after she is physically able to handle it. Sunset Song is the ravishing, romantic story of a young woman who gives up her dreams of a higher education to care for farm and family.
Blending painterly tableaux, to-die-for lighting, sweetly breathtaking camera moves (often slow and subtle), replete with Davies's virtually trademark recurring themes of time and memory, are, with few peers, amongst the best films of all time. The carefully hewn diamonds are something else altogether - one picture after another to take their rightful place as cinematic equivalents to the priceless Persian Koh-I-Noor diamond. Some have been exquisitely in the rough like 1983's The Terence Davies Trilogy of short films, the 1993 Southern Gothic of The Neon Bible and the shimmering 2008 Liverpool documentary Of Time and the City. Over the course of 30+ years, he's brought us eight feature length diamonds. To my mind, Terence Davies is a National Treasure and easily the United Kingdom's greatest living director. Starring: Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, Kevin Guthrie, Jack Greenlees, Daniela Nardini, Douglas Rankine, Ian Pirie, Linda Duncan McLaughlin, Mark Bonnar