The Terence Davies Trilogy

‘Originally there were three medium-length films (Children, Madonna and Child, Death and Transfiguration), all of which had the same protagonist, Robert Tucker, and followed him from childhood to death, illustrating a lifetime struggle between Robert’s (homo-) sexuality and his Catholicism and family background. Terence Davies (1945, Liverpool) has now edited all three into a feature-length film in which the original three parts have become three acts of a continuing drama. For those in need of a filmic reference, the Davies Trilogy resembles the trilogy by Bill Douglas (My Childhood, My Ain Folk, and My Way Home). Davies has stripped his fragmented narrative to the barest essentials: the way the light falls through a window to light a room and the character sitting in it, a glance, an obliquely heard half-phrase, the tones in which a name is pronounced, all provide more needed information than dialogue (of which there is a minimum). The sudden understanding shock of sexual self-discovery when the young Robert sees the water running over the body of an older boy in a school shower room has never been captured so accurately (and economically) on screen before. The film is not a happy one (films about repression never are) but it is terrifyingly moving.’ (David Overbey, 1984)
See also Of Time and the City (2008) in Spectrum.