That They May Face the Rising Sun

A beautiful portrait of the loneliness and isolation in countryside living, and finding the small joys in the monotony of the everyday. The random assortment of world-weary locals constantly dropping by Joe and Kate's home perfectly encapsulates the people for whom life has passed them by, and who come and go from the world leaving little trace.

It's also a tale of living with the hand you're dealt and the choices you make along the way. It's easy to envy the success of others when you don't have much to your name, or live in the past when times were better, but finding serenity in what you do have is the real key to life.

Sometimes all you have in the world is the people around you; sometimes they're all you need.

A strange movie but one worth seeing. What I expected was a kind of a modified version of the The Quiet Man because as an Irish person you expect that kind of nonsense twee movie, but this isn't it. Yes there are stereotypes in the movie and it is set in the 1980s, but overall it is a movie about a location and a movie about nothing really happening, which is what occurs in most of our lives.

The whole essence of the movie IMHO is that it's visual, visceral and about how the land and seasons shape the people and dictate their lives unless they decide to do otherwise. The main character is a little too smugly self-satisfied, but other than that it's well worth absorbing this movie.

This is an exceptional movie. The slow pace of life brings your heartbeat down, it takes you to places in way that other movies cannot. I really enjoyed the character development and the moments of joy and sadness. It's a true beauty, watch it.

This is an exceptional movie. The slow pace of life brings your heartbeat down, it takes you to places in way that other movies cannot. I really enjoyed the character development and the moments of joy and sadness. It's a true beauty, watch it.

This is an exceptional movie. The slow pace of life brings your heartbeat down, it takes you to places in way that other movies cannot. I really enjoyed the character development and the moments of joy and sadness. It's a true beauty, watch it.

Joe, (Barry Ward), and Kate, (Anna Bederke), have returned from London to rural Ireland. He writes, perhaps a novel, perhaps not, while she sketches and makes little decorative pieces from twigs and bits of wood. The rest of the time they simply try to manage the small farm holding on which they live, mostly with the help of kindly neighbors. The seasons pass and nothing out of the ordinary happens; one neighbor marries and another dies and we simply observe the small details that make up these people's lives.

Based on John McGahern's novel, Pat Collins' really quite extraordinary and quite extraordinarily moving film "That They May Face the Rising Sun" could best be described as Ireland's answer to the films of Ermanno Olmi or maybe the Taviani Brothers. Gorgeously shot on location in County Galway this is one of the greatest of films about rural life and the day-to-day existence of people who have nothing and yet who want for nothing.

Director Collins is fundamentally a documentary film-maker and he brings a documentarian's eye to bear on proceedings here drawing extraordinarily naturalistic performances from his cast. Veteran Irish actors like Sean McGinley, Lalor Roddy, Ruth McCabe and Brendan Conroy are doing perhaps their best work here and it's hard to believe that Phillip Dolan as one kindly neighbor has never acted in a film before. Leads Barry Ward and Anna Bederke are also superb in their quietude and their empathy, outsiders who nevertheless feel like the backbone of their community, magnets drawing others to them for help or just for a listening ear. A masterpiece that simply has to be seen.

Having grown up in rural donegal, it was a great movie as it brought up so many memories. It felt very true to the time and place. They obviously put a lot of time and thought into certain scenes and how people would have interacting at the time. Its a slow movie but it hits a punch. It goes without saying that the long shots of the scenery are beautiful and it is done in a way that it ties into the story. I hope that people that are not familiar with the place don't think that the more eccentric characters are overplayed or exaggerated as these are characters that are very familiar to those that grow up in rural Ireland.