Sunset Song
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: May 13, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
73
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
8
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
TheWrapSam AdamsMay 12, 2016
There are moments in Sunset Song that rank with Davies’ most poignant. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzMay 12, 2016
One of the great director Terence Davies' best films: an example of old school and new school mentalities coming together to create a challenging and unique experience. Read full review
100
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 11, 2016
As with most miracles, Sunset Song is more likely to evoke awe than any one particular emotion; it accumulates an immensely tender beauty that fills up your heart like water rising in a well during a rainstorm. Read full review
100
The Film StageEthan VestbyMay 9, 2016
Even if the film is somewhat less impressionistic than director Terence Davies’ previous work, many compositions and gestures beyond just the easy-to-praise 70mm vistas feel destined to replay forever and ever in the mind. Read full review
100
Screen DailyDavid D'ArcySep 19, 2015
A tour de force of drama, composition and colour. Read full review
91
The PlaylistNikola GrozdanovicSep 19, 2015
With his monumental control of the camera —at times staying with characters during quiet moments of anticipation, at others panning slowly 360 degrees to envelop us in the entirety of the environment— Davies directs the most refined coming-of-age story cinema has seen in recent years. Read full review
90
The New York TimesStephen HoldenMay 12, 2016
Like most of Mr. Davies’s films, Sunset Song makes you see the world through his sorrowful eyes. He is a die-hard romantic, whose acute sensitivity to the passage of time conveys a bittersweet awareness of the fragility of beauty, which, for him, is synonymous with melancholy. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMay 26, 2016
Parts of Sunset Song rank with Davies' very best work. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyJoe McGovernMay 12, 2016
The film takes a false turn in its final act, but there is a certain melancholy enchantment in Davies’ golden-hued countryside. When a crowd sings “Auld Lang Syne” at a wedding reception, he makes you feel the tender warmth of a hearth fire alighted in the world. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerNov 30, 2015
Deyn is a revelation in a difficult but rewarding take on Scottish rural life. The most English of directors has done a Scottish classic proud. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonSep 19, 2015
A lusty ballad of love and heartbreak sung with passion and power, and just a handful of off-key notes. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithMay 12, 2016
Davies’ quiet, painterly film largely eschews musical cues that would heighten its emotional impact, but as it is, Sunset Song is captivating in its sincerity. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungSep 19, 2015
It is a rare director who dares to embrace the slow, meditative rhythms of a classic novel without feeling the need to modernize or accelerate it, but Davies uses the measured pace to unfold his poetic vision of the Scottish peasantry and their attachment to the land. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJun 1, 2016
Sunset Song is not one of Davies’ most expressive or artistically successful films, but I’m very glad for the opportunity to have made the acquaintance of Chris Guthrie. Read full review
63
Boston GlobePeter KeoughMay 19, 2016
Has its moments of grace, but too often resorts to conventions and a tone of high lugubriousness. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineJames LattimerMay 9, 2016
Terence Davies's sheer talent for creating sensuous images conveniently masks how little of this feeling actually emerges from the plot these images illustrate. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenMay 12, 2016
Sunset Song, Davies’ adaptation of a 1932 novel about a Scottish farming family, falls short of the intended cumulative effect, its emotional power undercut by its studied, episodic unfolding. Read full review
60
CineVueBen NicholsonSep 19, 2015
While there is hardship and anguish, Davies' deliberate and treatment of the source material ultimately lessens the dramatic impact even while it retains its splendour. Read full review
60
The GuardianHenry BarnesSep 19, 2015
It’s all fairly indulgent. But Sunset Song also has a viciousness that stops it falling too deep into a slumber Read full review
60
The TelegraphTim RobeySep 19, 2015
There are gorgeous things about it, there’s one really good performance, and reminders of Davies’ transcendent style ripple through the film. But it also feels broken and cumbersome, weighed down by a number of decisions that simply don’t work. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMay 11, 2016
Stultifying in spots, the period drama Sunset Song marks an unexpected misstep for Terence Davies, the eccentric filmmaker whose movies evoke limbo states of memory and repressed feeling using a very British vocabulary of drab spaces. Read full review
50
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanMay 19, 2016
Sunset Song is a gritty and gorgeous film. Perhaps a little too gorgeous, in fact, and not gritty enough. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorMay 12, 2016
It’s ripe to the point of bursting and, with a plot that tilts to melodrama, Davies flirts dangerously with cliché, creating an over-wrought period piece where every wheat field is bathed in golden sunlight and every childbirth is announced by chilling screams. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 19, 2015
In full anamorphic 65mm splendor, the resulting landscapes are lovely, as is the face of relative newcomer Agyness Deyn in the role of hardy Scottish heroine Chris Guthrie, although the underlying feelings are all but lost, rendered in a difficult-to-fathom Scottish dialect and withheld by Davies’ overly genteel directorial approach. Read full review
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