You’d think a literary adaptation directed by Terence Davies, using 70mm for the film’s exteriors, would draw a bit more attention. And while "Sunset Song" has been buzzing in cinephile circles since it debuted on the festival circuit last year (our Nikola Grozdanovic called it "a remarkable experience" out of TIFF), the good news is that it’s finally arriving in stateside cinemas, and a new trailer has arrived.
Starring Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, and Kevin Guthrie, the story is based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, and is a coming-of-age tale about a young woman in a rural community that’s touched by the coming First World War. Here’s the official synopsis:
Sunset Song is Terence Davies’ intimate epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War. A young woman’s endurance against the hardships of rural Scottish life, based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, told with gritty poetic realism by Britain’s greatest living auteur. The film takes place during the early years of the twentieth century, with the conflicts and choices a young woman experiences reflecting the struggle between tradition and change; a struggle that continues to resonate today. Set in a rural community, Sunset Song is driven by the young heroine Chris and her intense passion for life, for the unsettling Ewan and for the unforgiving land. The First World War reaches out from afar, bringing the modern world to bear on the community in the harshest possible way, yet in a final moment of grace, Chris endures, now a woman of remarkable strength who is able to draw from the ancient land in looking to the future. Sunset Song is at once epic in emotional scale and deeply romantic at its core, given power by Terence Davies’ unflinching poetic realism.
"Sunset Song" opens on May 13th.
