Of Time and the City

SYNOPSIS

Film-maker Terence Davies ruminates on his alienation from God and the Liverpool of his youth in this highly personal documentary that slips between eulogy and onslaught with a waspish wit. Juxtaposing idealised recollections of austere Christmases, day trips to New Brighton and divine visitations to the movies with jaundiced snipes at "Betty Windsor" and the Beatles, Davies delights in his own sentimentality and indignation, as his hushed narration laments the failure of the world to live up to his youthful expectations. But while the intimate reveries recall the brilliance of his earlier autobiographical features, such as Distant Voices, Still Lives, the despondent diatribe on the decaying multicultural port that Davies left behind is regrettably dismissive of the subsequent generations he seems unable or unwilling to understand. So, while this is a masterly piece of cinema that conveys the personal significance of a bygone age, it's less successful as a piece of either epochal or local history.