Tag: Scottish

Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, and Sarah, Plain and Tall are all books that were about women living in farming communities, simple lives, and totally kid friendly.

Sunset Song is not one of those things. It is about a girl, sure, a farm, yeah, but it isn’t American and it isn’t a nice and easy kid friendly book. It was a realistic novel and it is considered one of the greatest Scottish novels of the 20th century. Source: Wikipedia.

It is the type of thing that one would have imagined as a film thirty years ago but hey, better late than never.

Life doesn’t give a shit about your strength, there is still work to be done.

Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn) is almost a woman and living with her family. Her brother Will (Jack Greenlees) often comes to blows with their father (Peter Mullan), and by that, Will gets whipped still. They also have two younger siblings. Oh wait on that as well, despite her age, the mom (Daniela Nardini) is now pregnant again, with twins!

Now the family has to go and move to a bigger house and plantation. And with more space comes more problems. Depression and loneliness are a big part of it, and after a few events, it is just Chris, Will, and her father. And times are hard, money is scarce, people are jobless.

If I kept talking about the plot, I would describe more worse and worse situations. Including the start of World War I, yay!

So let’s just cut the chase, say life is hard, and introduce some more actors. Like Stuart Bowman, Douglas Rankine, and Kevin Guthrie.

Don’t be mad, just fill in the blanks and you can probably imagine all the bad stuff.

Sunset Song had a lot going for it. Apparently a great source material, a good an authentic feeling cast, gorgeous land and shots, and very uncomfortable moments. Because no one wants to see life on the farm if it is ordinary and boring. We need that bad stuff to happen to our cast in order to see some struggles and see heroes grow before our eyes.

Deyn knocks it out of the park in the leading role. She grows from an obedient oldest daughter to someone capable of running everything on her own. She is just a woman trying to suffer in a man’s world. And it is a terrible story to watch, which is why I love it so. I never got fully cry emotional, but I was still right there on her journey with her.

It is a long movie with a lot of scenes. It reinforced some aspects of World War I that I had recently learned, making it feel even more awesome. The soundtrack was also a delight, featuring some nice Scottish songs.

But what I didn’t like? The ending. It felt rushed (in a 140 minute film), and it ended on such a weird note. I have come to learn that the book is the first of a trilogy and in book form it might make sense, but as a film it just feels blah. “Is that it?” I asked my computer screen. I had felt like our main girl was suddenly no longer acting like herself. And it didn’t give any nice conclusion or anything.

So if there are more movies in the future? Fantastic, I would watch them. But I hate it when a movie doesn’t want to tell a whole complete story.

“Give me a random foreign movie!” I shouted at the Netflix, not fully understanding how technology worked.

Four hours later, when the program still did nothing, I decided to just search and find one on my own. And thus, a review of The Angels’ Share was born!

This one from Scotland. Sure, not really super foreign, in that they are technically speaking English, but I definitely had to turn on the subtitles to fully understand some of these characters.

Get it? Kilts! Foreign movies! A-ha-ha!

Community service seems to be the punishment of choice in Scotland. I can say that, because the beginning of the story introduces us to several different people all receiving several hundred hours of community service for various crimes they have committed and none of them get jail time! Including our…uhh, main character Robbie (Paul Brannigan). Except Robbie maybe should have deserved jail time, for beating up a complete stranger. But his wife Leonie (Siobhan Reilly) is about to give birth, and somehow they argued that his life is undergoing changes and he should be there for the newborn.

Well, Robbie is caught up in a family feud / gang war type of situation. He grew up in a violent world and cannot escape it. Hell, Leonie’s family beat him up when he went to visit his new son, just because of all the trouble he had caused.

But some people give him hope. Like Harry (John Henshaw) their volunteer foreman guy, who helps him out, and tries to reward the crew with good work done, like taking them to a distillery. They soon find out Robbie has a nose for different beverages and a good judge of taste and quality. A very useless talent mostly.

However, maybe alcohol can be the answer to all of his problems? Maybe he can get a real job in the industry? Well, that won’t help too much, because he also has to get out of the area or else he will always be caught up in this violence?

So what is Robbie to do? He needs money fast. So when news of a very rare cask is going up for action, will he succumb to the high monetary gain should he steal it, in order to start his life anew? Or will he, you know, not. Also starring Jasmin Riggins, Gary Maitland, and William Ruane as his community service companions.

Ah, so bottles are under their kilts. Now it all makes sense.

Seriously, how can these people understand each other? Some characters are just so Scottish. Reminded me of Brad Pitt‘s character on Snatch, nationalities aside.

I will say that after watching it, I am a bit disappointed by the level of comedy in this comedy/drama. My hopes were raised pretty high because the first scene had me almost cackling. But then the humor after it was few and far between. It gave me false expectations so early in the movie, I was left with a sour taste in my mouth.

The entire middle felt pretty slow. The ending was interesting however, but not a lot happened at that point.

So, overall, disappointed with the comedy, but the drama had some interesting moments. Because it is Scottish and there is anger, there are some pretty sweet curses thrown about, reminding Americans that our curses are shit in comparison.

I guess it is okay. Not really something I’d watch again after a viewing, but it was a decent way to past the time. Maybe next time I yell at Netflix, it will find me a movie faster.