The Long Day Closes is a work of emotional autobiography far more than literal autobiography. It is a portrait of a childhood and real childhood experiences, though expressed entirely through ethereal out-of-sync flashes and jolts of subjective imagination, occasionally coloured also by disembodied references of music and movies. A curious and yet highly authentic translation of memory and feeling more than specific details. I don’t know that one of the kid’s brothers was even named at all through the duration of this movie (Mother certainly wasn’t) because it’s just a mere fact of life.
A few months ago, the British filmmaker Terence Davies passed away, a loss that was mourned greatly in the film community. I will admit it passed me by, as I was completely unfamiliar with Davies’ body of work. None of his movies ever broke through to the mainstream -the only one I was familiar with in passing was Deep Blue Sea, mostly due to its star power of Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston. The impression I got was that his style was somewhere between Mike Leigh and James Ivory, a director of distinctly British stories told in an elegant fashion. When I decided to watch The Long Day Closes, looking for a Criterion Channel film with Christmas imagery, I did not expect the gorgeous tone poem that it turned out to be.
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It is a glimpse into Davies’ childhood, here embodied in a twelve-year-old avatar called Bud, in Liverpool in the 1950s. A poor working-class neighbourhood, but the politics and social structures are not of substantial interest to Davies as he simply recalls a collage of moments, influences, and fantasies that sometimes bleed into reality and paint a picture of that world he grew up in and his perspective on it. Painting is the apt term here, as many of the film’s compositions are deliberately artful. Acutely framed in deep focus, symmetrical photography, lit extremely precisely to draw your eye and cordon off its image from the world around -these little scenes often feel like moving Baroque paintings of the twentieth century: the Christmas feast (half on the street under lamplight), Sunday Mass, the schoolhouse. And it all exists within the wonderful little confined world of memory. We see very little past the end of Bud’s block -though Davies could have filmed this in Liverpool where he would have found the same roads and architecture, he films it instead on a sound-stage and makes little effort to hide that in the contours of the limited buildings we glimpse. But what reason had the young Bud to venture beyond them?
Well he may not have had one, but his imagination certainly makes up for it, and the movie is coloured by little flights of fancy: some creature grabbing his head as he listens to the rain pelt the window over his bed, during class imagining himself soaked on the deck of an old ship, in church picturing his brother on the cross in place of Jesus. Each of these is illustrated in a way that cuts away the external world: a shaft of light illuminating Bud in the darkness, the melancholy of choral hymns as soundtrack to his visions. We get a sense where this all comes from -Bud’s escape from dour existence is the movie house, and Davies treats us to one of the great beautiful movie-watching scenes (two if you count the film’s ending -driving the point home all the further). And because these and other pieces of culture so influence his perspective, the movie too reflects their presence on his mind; from an ironic opening to the Twentieth Century Fox anthem, to music from American singers like Nat King Cole -pretty much all of the film’s music is derived from some other source, be it a contemporary popular piece, an old British song, or a hymn. And audio clips of movies -some American, some curiously British. I recognized two Ealing Comedies by the sounds of Alec Guinness: Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers -themselves quite emblematic of a post-war British culture trying to find itself.
There isn’t much to the characters of the film, they exist merely as these natural figures of Bud’s life. And for that they make an imprint, and feel unmistakably real. Most significant is Bud’s mother, played by Marjorie Yates, a kind though busy woman, apparently widowed, standing in for a larger idea of resilient British motherhood. Bud’s sister and two brothers are all older, each with their own partners whom he occasionally observes. There are the very entertaining neighbours: a husband who annoys his wife with bad impressions and THE wife who clearly loves to complain about him. But it is a very humble community, as seen in what appears to be a New Year’s Party everybody celebrates together. Emotional recollection is again so important a thing here, and the sense is that Davies holds some nostalgic regard for this adolescence and this world, while also noting its deprivations.
Yet in this the movie is incredibly captivating, in both visuals and mood. Just a scene of the rain on the cobblestone street or a kid looking out his window at snowfall are more moving to me than hundreds of movies that would strive for a like concerted emotional effect. The Long Day Closes is a perfect expression of autobiography turned to art.
Criterion Recommendation: The Green Knight (2021)
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“I challenge you to a Christmas game.”
Yes, one of the great new holiday classics to emerge in the past few years is David Lowery’s excellent interpretation of the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Moody and mystical, creeping yet entrancing, it is probably the great fantasy film of the modern era, creating a grandeur of scope with limited resources and an absolutely gripping morality tale that encapsulates both the firmness of the ancient myth (and in that fashion is told episodically) and a very modern sense of internal conflict. Starring Dev Patel in his greatest performance as the anxious yet prideful knight-to-be whose need to prove himself puts him on this fatal journey: a trial of his will, nobility, and personal code; with additional excellent turns from Alicia Vikander and Ralph Ineson as the titular daunting knight who set this test. Mesmerizing in its storytelling, its visuals, its direction and music -one of the best film scores in recent years; and an ending that is utterly bold and enrapturing, symbol of the price to be paid for moral cowardice, it is still an immensely effective piece of work. And it is a Christmas movie, one with basically a pre-made minimalist Criterion cover!
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