I just watched all three of the component pieces of The Terence Davies Trilogy separately so I'll rate each one individually below. Yet, combined all three create a poignant and heartbreaking profile of a repressed homosexual man in mid 20th century Liverpool that so few may relate to in the 21st century. From lived experience, the film is so real of what many gay men went through for most of the 20th century. It is brilliant.
Children. 8 out of 10
As a boy in 1976, when this film came out, and as someone who was struggling with my own homosexuality back then, Children presented a slice of life that hit so close to home. The loneliness. The hiding. The longing. The sense of shame. And most of all the threats, at times real, other times imagined, of the bullying by other boys. Young Robbie Tucker (played by Phillip Mawdsley) comes off as almost catatonic at first. One might attribute this to opening scenes where we see Robbie being bullied. Yet, as the film progresses, so too does our understanding and appreciation of Tucker's struggles with family, with school and mostly with himself. These are interspersed with scenes of Tucker as a 30-ish young man. While perhaps dated, the film still resonates as to the struggle of growing up as a marginalized children, not just those who were LGBTQ+. For such a short film, under an hour, Children packs a bigger wallop than many other like films.
Madonna and Child 7 out of 10
Death and Transfiguration 7 out of 10
Each at less than 30 minutes, these two film don't pack as much of a wallop as Children, yet they build on young, middle aged and then older Robbie Tucker as his repressed sexuality haunts him. All of this is due to Tucker working to care for his mother and due to his stifling Catholic upbringing. It is just heartbreaking. The scene where Robbie is on the ferry crying in his loneliness is so very sad - and so resonant of the scene from Children when Robbie and his mother were on a bus and she was crying in like despair over her own life.
Terence Davies should be lauded for an uncanny representation of sexual repression in quietly wrenching manner.
