The Long Day Closes

Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: May 28, 1993

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

85	METASCORE Universal acclaim based on 15 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Jay Carr

Sensuous and rarefied, elevating its particulars into epiphanies, The Long Day Closes is as joyful as introversion gets. [9 July 1993, p.25]

100

Edward Guthmann

All things considered, The Long Day Closes is a remarkable film -- tender and intelligent, long on mood and short on ''action,'' a cinematic poem that stands head and shoulders above the summer harvest of bonehead action thrillers. [23 July 1993, p.C9]

100

A.A. Dowd

What’s uniquely remarkable about The Long Day Closes, Terence Davies’ 1992 return to his own childhood, is how gloriously disorganized its story feels. Read full review

100

Fernando F. Croce

The Long Day Closes posits its pubescent protagonist as a tiny camera absorbing and transforming the reality all around him. Read full review

100

Scott Tobias

A singularly beautiful nostalgia piece that radiates with love and sadness, and doesn’t extract one type of feeling from another. It’s a film of aching bittersweetness, impeccably realized, past perfect. Read full review

100

John Petrakis

Davies has said that he loves the "poetry of the ordinary." In that sense, he doesn't just wax nostalgic about the good old days, but rather, he makes us question and reevaluate those things we may not remember so readily-not the general, but the specific. Read full review

100

Lloyd Sachs

After the curtains close on The Long Day Closes, its special light lingers, sending us back to the beginning for another "hearing." Such is the singular intensity of Davies' vision; even the rug has much to say. [30 July 1993, p.40]

100

Rick Groen

The Long Day Closes is a twice-remarkable film. Once, because director Terence Davies opens his personal bottle of memories and makes them interesting to us. Twice, because, in doing so, he triggers our own memories. [11 June 1993]

Jeff Menell

The Long Day Closes is impressive in many ways. It may be a strange filmgoing experience, but its haunting imagery and sounds make it powerfully memorable. [24 May 1993]

Stephen Holden

A deeply personal film, and at times a touching one, it is a collection of fragments and memories artfully pieced into a quirky, captivating book of dreams. Read full review

Derek Elley

Strength of Davies’ vision is the crux, and it holds the line to the final, confident fadeout. Read full review

EmpireLloyd Bradley

Though Davies says this is a celebration of what were the best years of his life — he had a doting mum, nice sisters, and school was apparently okay — you'd hate to see what he'd produce if he were depressed, for the overall mood is heavy and glum. Read full review

Peter Rainer

Nothing that Davies does is ordinary or artless but his craftsmanship has its suffocating side too. Read full review

James Berardinelli

The Long Day Closes is very much the visual equivalent of a verse or a poem: beautiful images, but no narrative. Read full review

Rene Rodriguez

What The Long Day Closes lacks is a narrative thread, however slim, to match the perfectly realized setting and wonderful visuals Davies has crafted. The whole thing feels like a chapter of a much larger work, one that, if finished, would doubtless prove more intriguing than what we get here. [7 Aug 1993, p.G5]