New 35mm print! Continuing through territory masterfully illuminated in Distant Voices, Still Lives and his earlier Terence Davies Trilogy (SFIFF 1984), The Long Day Closes excavates more of the rich ore of the director’s Liverpool childhood. It focuses on his shy, daydreaming alter ego, Bud, growing up poor and Catholic during a time in the mid ’50s after the death of his brutal father. Composed of the details and small moments that make up a life—a mother’s favorite song sung softly to herself; a hot cup of cocoa on a cold rainy night; a family get-together; or a joyful trip to the cinema—the film is infused with a sense of contentment occasionally darkened by the shadow of sadness. The youngest in a large family, Bud often can’t be part of his siblings’ activities and, at a new school, is just starting to face conflicts and realizations that will bring him into his own adulthood. Davies’ muted colors, austere camera movements, painterly still lifes, snatches of dialogue and ripe, eclectic soundtrack—containing everything from Mahler to popular songs to traditional melodies to slivers of soundtracks from The Magnificent Ambersons and Great Expectations—are meticulously crafted into a sublime evocation of the imprint of time and place on one man. According to the director, “the film is a story of paradise, but the story of a paradise that’s already being lost and will only survive as a memory.”

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England 1992, 85 min. Written by Terence Davies. Photographed by Michael Coulter. With Marjorie Yates, Leigh McCormack, Anthony Watson. Film Desk