Entfernte Stimmen – Stilleben (1988)

Entfernte Stimmen – Stilleben: Directed by Terence Davies. With Freda Dowie, Pete Postlethwaite, Angela Walsh, Dean Williams. The lives of an English working-class family are told out of order in a free-associative manner. The first part, “Distant Voices

“Terrance Daviesu0026#39; two-part nostalgia exercise is, depending on your tolerance for unembellished honesty, either a sentimental trip down memory lane or a cold-eyed wallow in drab English monotony. The British writer director went to great lengths to re-create a facsimile of working class family life circa 1940-1950, and his meticulous attention to detail sets an almost too perfect mood: the film is both painfully realistic and totally depressing. Using a fragmented, hopscotch style approximating the actual process of memory itself, Davies mixes bits and pieces of autobiographical detail to show how cultural traditions have a way of repeating themselves for a typical Liverpool family, held together by stifling blue collar conditions and a good deal of recreational singing (38 period songs are featured on the soundtrack). The snapshot style doesnu0026#39;t allow for any dramatic momentum, but the film is constructed more as a sampling of brief, transient moments, and is extremely well crafted and emotional despite the often oppressive melancholy.”