As much as his films reveal a constant gulf between profanities and the sacral,
so much are those two elements connected into an original stylistic unity.


The intimate works of Terence Davies, one of the mostintriguing and certainly emotionally most honest representatives of contemporary
British film, are imbued with a strong portion of ambiguity which allows the
viewer to understand his messages in a right or wrong way, depending on the
aspect from which they observe his emotions. Therefore, it is hard to establish
at first glance whether his films are a kind of catharsis or full of revenge.
Raised in a patriarchal family with traditional Christian values, he observes
the world with the eyes of an innocent child with bloody knees because he
constantly has to kneel on the marble in front of the local church. But the
problem arises when the author tries to deal with his homosexuality. He is torn
between religion, which a priori throws away his “perverse” inclinations and
tendency, and his attempts to keep human dignity. So the main character in
Davies’ trilogy (Children, Madonna and Child, Death and
Transfiguration), in his mind, returns to painful memories, which haunted
him his whole life, trying to overcome his spiritual and emotional confusion.
But, some of the scenes in that poetic and intimate trilogy, shot with a 16mm
camera caused bitter reactions from the church. In the controversial scene from
the Madonna and Child, the eye of author’s camera observes the luxurious
interior of the cathedral, and we hear refined corals in the background
interwoven with sounds of a telephone call in which the main character tries to
make an appointment in a tattoo-shop to tattoo his testicles, while the man on
the other side of the line tells him how he has no intention to hold somebody’s
sex organs for less than 50 pounds. But, Davies is too intelligent a filmmaker
to use this at first glance shocking and surreal point as a cause for
blasphemous revenge. As much as his films reveal a constant gulf between
profanities and sacral, so much are those two elements connected into an
original stylistic unity. For Davies’s poetics is imbued with poetics, typical
for Jarman, and fascinated by sacral motives, which bring scenes of martyrdom
and physical pain.

Differently from his stylistic trilogy in which the author uses religion as an
internal frame for settling of accounts with himself, Davies’s autobiographical
study Distant Voices, Still Lives, which follows after his melancholic
and emotionally honest film The Long Day Closes, handles author’s
thematic preoccupations in much lighter tones. Here religion is an infallible
part of his at first glance idyllic family daily life. It is the catalyst of
their small joys and is connected with traditional family rituals (Christmas
celebrations, christenings, weddings), which follow each other as disconnected
impressionistic vignettes and are broken by sharp cuts, spiced up by the
romantic music of Cole Porter, Nat King Cole and Doris Day. But the final scene
when the main character, with tears in his eyes, leaves the room where his
wedding takes place, reveals that behind that, at first sight, nostalgic and
poetic vision of lost paradise, there hides a traumatized person with all his
emotional dilemmas and insecurities.

Even though Davies in his film The Neon Bible exchanged the gloomy
Liverpool atmosphere with the American south, already the title hints at his
obsession with religious terror and hypocrisy of organized religion. And there
is the unavoidable character of the preacher, whose religious fanatism plays a
decisive role in the boy’s actions. Furthermore the author’s thematic obsessions
are once again dominated by joys and agonies of family life. The story is
atypically linear. But, Davies’s elegant camera moves, crystal clear
compositions, bold ellipses and inspirational use of jazzy music numbers all
prove that we are once again in author’s characteristic territory.

Davies’s newest masterpiece, The House of Mirth, an adaptation of the
novel by the American writer Edith Wharton, also uses religious symbolism, which
is visible in the title taken from the Old Testament. Since every single meeting
of her main character (an atypical role by the great Gillian Anderson) will end
up in some kind of fraud, delusion or disgrace, we can observe her character as
an ultimate incarnation of a martyr. Martyrdom is regarded as an appearance from
God. And with that the circle is closed. (Dragan Rubesa)