The Long Day Closes

Okay, I get it. This movie is artistic. Plot and character development are secondary, irrelevant even perhaps. The film is about visual snapshots, emotional memories that are alternately nostalgic or slightly painful. But I think the movie tries so hard that it fails to entertain, choosing to assume that if you dont like it, that is okay, because it means you dont get it.

For example, do we really need the camera to linger on an empty scene like a stairway for 15 to 30 seconds after someone has walked up them? What does that add to the emotional impact of the film? And how illustrative is it to watch the boy stare at nothing for several moments without giving us any indication what he is thinking or feeling? Shouldnt we care? And is it g...

Why this this didnt get even one BAFTA nomination is quite a puzzle as its a beautiful piece of cinema that uses its own industrys nostalgia to paint a picture of a young boy longing for that intangible something we all want as our teens loom large. This story is set in a Liverpool still recovering from the end of the war, and where the young Bud (Leigh McCormack) lives with adoring mum (Marjorie Yates) and his three siblings. He is a quiet lad, and of course that earns him the enmity of the bullies at his local Catholic school where the cane is as much the currency as then pen. Its not that he is lonely in any melodramatic sense, its that his soul is restless for a life he has seen encapsulated in his favourite place - his cinema. He could...