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Cineaste Magazine: Of Time and the City

Terence Davies is one of the most respected filmmakers in cinema today. His work has been honoured by awards from around the world. His dark and powerful trilogy, all set in Liverpool, Children (1976), Madonna and Child (1980) and Death and Transfiguration (1983) develops powerful themes of forbidden sexuality, Catholicism, violence, loss, death and childhood. But it is in his 1988 film Distant Voices, Still Lives, again drawing on his Liverpool roots, that these become exquisitely blended with a gentle warmth and humour and a transcendent sense of hope beyond the miseries of difficult daily life. It is also here that the auteur finds a particularly unique visual style – tableaux of characters that come slowly to life, the sense of the outsider observing through windows which can be snowy, misted or distant and an exquisite sepia palette, painted in places with muted pastels. This visual style combines with his themes and his stories to give him a very original voice.