Life Is Short / Soundtrack of Your Life

Life Is Short is an as-needed series documenting the films we just couldn't make it through. We like to refer to these movies as "Damsels in Distress." Previous entries are here , here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

My kingdom for some subtitles. We might revisit the second half of "Sunset Song," Terence Davies' ode to Scottish husbandry if we had an easier way to decipher the thick Scottish brogues of its characters. (Apparently some theatrical releases do have subtitles.) Shooting for an epic flair in between "Gone With the Wind" and a John Mellencamp Farm Aid performance, Davies' dreary, plodding family saga has the dour demeanor of "The Turin Horse" mixed with the bleakness of "Meek's Cutoff."

We get a gruff old man who treats his wife, son and daughter like cattle, just an unredeeming bastard who gets a send-off he deserves. This story hangs on the narrow shoulders of that daughter, Chris, played by Agyness Deyn, who has the angular features and the blank stare of a muppet. It takes half the film for her to finally inherit the family farm in rural Scotland in the days leading up to World War I and get this narrative chugging along. Little seems at stake, and it feels not so much retro as embarrassingly old-fashioned, an overly reverent adaptation of a beloved novel.

Davies, the master behind the whispery period pieces like "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Deep Blue Sea," is the wrong fit for this project. Rather than his trademarked urban grit, he traffics in sweeping landscapes, such as glistening lakes and undulating amber waves of grain. As Ignatiy Vishnevetsky puts it succinctly for the Onion AV Club: "The result is awkward, sometimes corny, occasionally boring, but still elegantly composed and peppered with grace notes of sensuality and despair." And he sat through the whole thing.

Title: SUNSET SONG
Running Time: 135 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  65 MIN
Portion Watched: 48%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 53 YRS, 8 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 76.4 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Walked home, stopping off for a slice and a beer.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 5-1 (with subtitles)

BONUS TRACK: SOUNDTRACK OF YOUR LIFE
An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems. 

Date: 3 July 2016, 7 p.m.
Place: Central Avenue at Stanford, Albuquerque, NM
Song:  "Mendocino"
Artist: Sir Douglas Quintet
Irony Matrix: 4.6 out of 10
Comment: On the walk home from "Sunset Song," I stuck along the main drag, Route 66, and sitting at a traffic light was a dude on a chopper, lady on the back, blasting his stereo with this all-time favorite from Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and the boys. If I hadn't left the movie early, I would have never experienced that moment in time.