"Distant Voices, Still Lives" at PFA

For some reason, I expected Pacific Film Archive's "shot-by-shot discussion" of Distant Voices, Still Lives to be movie first, then analysis. When I got there, I noticed a little table in the center of the screening room with a light, a glass, and a pitcher of water. Why lead a discussion from the middle of the audience? Well, because director Terence Davies was to show us the film, on DVD, wielding a remote, pausing and talking over it and allowing viewers to ask questions.

Had I known this, I would have rented the movie myself ahead of time, because I'd never seen it. But it's hard to imagine a more perfect host for this sort of thing than Davies. He was witty, erudite, and unfailingly polite, and clearly enjoyed himself.

The film was also well suited to the format, since there's very little story to follow. And because it's very closely based on Davies' own childhood, he was able to reminisce about the true characters and put each scene in context.

Like Davies's The Long Day Closes, DVSL is about growing up poor in 1950s England, specifically Liverpool. (Unfortunately, I missed its Friday night screening at PFA because I was sick.) I prefer Long Day because it's more cohesive: really, all about a young boy who's close to his mother and loves to go to the movies. DVSL looks at the rest of the family, including a tyrannical father, with glimpses of their lives roughly before (the Distant Voices half of the film) and after (Still Lives) his death. So while both are very personal films, this one is more a vision of family and community life in that setting than a personal reminiscence.

But it's a remarkably honest and understanding film in regard to the painful and distorted ways people who love each other can be to one another. Davies never judges anyone, and neither does he paint a silver lining around his father's cruelty after his death. And like Long Day, it's elegant and contemplative without ever becoming, well, distant. The combination of formal compositions and intimate, realistic action is reminiscent of Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

Also like Hou, as well as Ozu, Davies likes scenes of characters singing right in the context of the story. In Hou and Ozu films and in Long Day, there are songs that startle us by continuing to full length, free from the cuts we expect after a few lines or a verse. In DVSL, some songs do get cut, but there are far more of them. The film is seemingly one-quarter singing. But it's lovely stuff. After the screening I asked Davies why he uses so much of this, and first of all he said it was true to life, that people did spend a lot of time singing to each other. Then he noted that, without knowing it, those people were usually expressing their deepest feelings in the songs they sang.