Distant Voices, Still Lives

The film resembles a family photo album: the central composition of the camera, like the naïve art of the domestic Daguerre family, captures family gatherings and family milestones for eternity. From these, a slightly musty wind blows onto the viewer from the places of eternity, carrying the bittersweet trills of the Orphean lyre of British commoners, into which everyone immerses themselves as if into death, which they are already living. If the characters try to avoid ending up like their parents and grandparents but still become what they never wanted to be, is death, which we all in vain try to avoid and which robs us of ourselves, the best analogy for a family photograph and a popular tune? And if Davies' film consists of these two main building blocks, isn't the keystone of the entire film construction the fact that the actual death of the tyrannical paternal figure only creates a space for the lasting influence of death spread across the lives of all his children and his children's children... until we arrive at the beginning when the mythical father, here somewhere in the bushes of Albion, died and as an echo of his death, the mourning of his children still resonates in the form of national songs. (02/19/2021)