Still pursuing his passions
Terence Davies talks poetry, passion and Sex and the City, with James Croot.
Despite its attraction to many of his contemporaries and countrymen, television holds no appeal for veteran British film-maker Terence Davies.
Speaking while here to accompany his two new films screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival (Sunset Song and A Quiet Passion), the 70-year-old writer-director says that, particularly in his homeland, networks are only interested in making genre series.
‘‘The productions are usually sub-American and they do it badly. They also always seem to be about people running around with guns.
‘‘To me, there’s only one thing more embarrassing than an actor running around with a gun and that’s a British actor running around with a gun – they just look ridiculous.’’
Adding that, visually, all TV shows seem to look the same, Davies concludes that ‘‘television would offer me nothing’’.
Not that the helmer of such meditative, gorgeous-looking, cinematic opuses as The Long Day Closes and The Deep Blue Sea isa luddite or old-school curmudgeon – far from it.
He’s embraced digital technology, transitioning away from celluloid over these last two projects.
‘‘When we did Sunset Song in 2014, all the exteriors were on 65mm because, at that time, film still had the edge over digital, but now that’s not the case. We shot the whole of A Quiet Passion on digital.
‘‘It’s now replaced film in my mind, because it’s much more sensitive and you can do extraordinary things with it. It’s as important as the coming of sound really.’’
Amusingly, both films screening at the festival were actually inspired by television projects Davies (the youngest of 10 Liverpudlian children) watched in the early 1970s.
In the case of Sunset Song ,it was a 1971 six-part Sunday afternoon adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel, while A Quiet Passion wouldn’t exist if Davies hadn’t seen a Sunday morning documentary on American poet Emily Dickinson.
‘‘I remember it had the actress Claire Bloom reading her poetry and me and being captivated from the first one, ‘Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me’ . I immediately went out and bought her poetry, but I didn’t know anything about her life until much later.’’
When asked what persuaded him to make a biopic about her, Davies says he was drawn to her because he thinks she’s a genius.
‘‘She’s the greatest of the 19thcentury American poets, but she died without any recognition.
‘‘I feel very passionate about how unfair that is,’’ he says.
To find his Emily, Davies turned to television again.
‘‘I’d met Cynthia Nixon a few years ago for a film that didn’t materialise. I remember saying to her then, ‘look I have watched Sex and the City only twice and I do think it’s quite a pernicious series, it’s about the most superficial things.
‘‘The second time I watched it with the sound down because I was only interested in the reactions and yours were always the ones that were the most truthful’.’’
It also helped that Nixon also bore a striking resemblance to the Massachusettes-born poet.
‘‘We got a copy of the only photo of Emily Dickinson as an adult, taken when she was 17, and we superimposed Cynthia’s face on it. She was like an older version. I just knew she was right.’’ Davies praises his leading lady for her loyalty, as she waited two years while he raised the financing for the film.
‘‘Waiting is frustrating, but there’s nothing you can do. It pays to remember that it is other people’s money you’re spending, not yours and when you do get it, you have a moral responsibility not to fritter it away.’’
In A Quiet Passion‘s case, some of the funding came from Belgian tax credits for filming there.
Does Davies’ think Brexit will make life more difficult for a British film-maker like himself? ‘‘I voted to stay in the Union. I think we’ve signed our own death warrant – it’s just unbelievably stupid. Look, it’s always difficult to get financing when you’re not in the mainstream and I’m not in the mainstream.’’
But is there a sense of him broadening his horizons and increasing his workrate? After all, it took him 20 years to make his first five features and now he’s completed three in the past five years.
Likewise, while his earlier works were very English in outlook, these latest two are Scottish and American tales.
‘‘It would be nice to continue to develop and not just keep doing the same thing, but I think you also have to be true to what you see and what you hear. I’m interested in these stories – one just happened to be in Scotland, the other in America.
‘‘In the body of anybody’s work there will always be recurring themes, because that’s the way I think an artistic life happens. People staring through an open window lit by natural light or in stairways or doorways – all those things are integral to me. I don’t know why they are important though.
‘‘I suppose what I hope in all my stories is to celebrate the poetry of the ordinary and the courage of people to continue on – sometimes in the face of very difficult circumstances.’’
Sunset Song (M) and A Quiet Passion (PG) are screening as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival. For more information, see nziff.co.nz