THE TERENCE DAVIES TRILOGY (2007)

Cast

Plot

The Terence Davies Trilogy acts, as do his two later films, ‘Distant Voices, Still Lives' and ‘The Long Day Closes', as a reconstruction of his childhood and youth in working class post-war Liverpool. In his trilogy Davies uses alter ego Robert Tucker, a shy and introverted child who is assumed to be not as able mentally as his peers and so bullied by those around him. Robert's home life is darkly overshadowed by his violent abusive father and his guilt over homosexual feeling, which is exacerbated by his strict Catholic upbringing. These dark and unhappy memories though are interspersed with the joys of listening to the wireless and visiting the cinema. Using a fragmented, patchwork narrative to emphasise personal memory, Davies allows us to better understand and emphasise with his barely fictional protagonist. A landmark observation of the evolution of contemporary British culture.