maxi13 Review of Distant Voices, Still Lives

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

non-British reviewer: maybe just for English audience

[1 October 2015]

i am austrian and grown up in the time this film was made. i was lucky to have lovely parents. Nevertheless i like dramatic, even tragic films and some of them were about working class families in UK. Some reviews have highly rated this film, said it is a masterpiece, so i had to see it, but i have to say that it didn't really touch me - maybe because i am not an insider of UK-culture. the domestic violence shown here was harsh, but at the end far from reality, cause in reality it is much more cruel and furious. Other movies are showing this much more real. In this film you get an insight like you were part of the society at that time. maybe you will see something, for a short time, when a door is open and you walk by, but mostly its hidden behind the doors. same here, but because of that it is not so touching. the film is very episodic and there is no real plot. this wouldn't be any problem if it would concentrate more on the persons, if f.ex. you get a more psychological insight, but the people are just surfaces. Maybe people used to be that way that time, hiding themselves behind a facade, but its not so good if you watch a movie and should be touched by the people. You don't get real intimate insights here. anyway, the actors have played well and the pictures were sometimes really great, as are the sceneries which really looked if they were shot at that time. The second half was shot with a more obvious nostalgia filter, which some people may hate, but i think which was a good choice. it felt like a film of that time and not of the 80s, it looked like original, sometimes even colorized pictures of the 50s. and… what is also not everyones thing… 50% of the film the actors are singing. maybe it was really that important at that time in UK, but for me, as a viewer of today, it was just annoying. sorry! to get to the point: the film was not touching, not tragic enough to be really touching - and for an independent film, which is not plot-driven, you don't get enough insight of the characters. So it was - for me - who is not a British guy, just a decent experience. its a good movie, because of the pictures, the atmosphere and the actors, but it was not an extraordinary good one. maybe you have to be from the British islands to really enjoy this film. its okay, but not a masterpiece for an "UK-outsider".