distant voices, still lives strikes me as a mood piece more than anything else. it's a pretty effective one at that. this is a mood piece that is driven and energized by the deeply personal nature of the narrative and passion with which the story is told. the director, terrence davies, has a very specific feeling towards his childhood and his past and he brings it out in this semi-autobiographical film. this film is about feeling a very specific feeling, a mix between nostalgia and cynicism and davies is able to bring that out very well throughout the film. if this mix of feelings is the exact target feeling that davies is targeting, his main method of eliciting that is through his use of music. music is played constantly throughout this film in order to guide the viewer through the emotions and shape our view of what is going on to conform to davies' views and feeling about the occurrences in the film. at the same time, the music in the movies also spells out the feelings and thoughts of the characters in the film, as well. they become a portal into the minds of the characters in ways that only music can provide. along with it providing a portal into the mind of the director, this has a profound effect on the viewer and makes it more transcendental of an experience than it would be otherwise. the experience of this film is much like that of a terrence malick film or a bob fosse film. the film works much better at the experiential level than it does at the narrative level. there is a story documenting the experiences of a dysfunctional family over time but it doesn't really matter all that much and isn't all that effective because it's not really meant to be. it is there to provide a site in which davies can evoke the feeling and experience that he wants to evoke and it proves to be a pretty good site for this, as well. honestly, the film feels like an exploration of how human memory operates, which makes this film very difficult to talk about. it jumps from scene to scene, as if one was remembering all of these things. the scenes all seem to be bathed in a warm glow guided along by the soundtrack that is often running in our heads. the experience that the film creates cannot be put into words in any effective way. it is something that has to be experienced to be understood. the film probably transcends the usefulness of a star rating too. the experience of this film relies upon the dialogue between our own experiences and the experiences that the film is guiding us through, in a way that other films don't necessarily rely on it. this is definitely a movie that i will have to revisit because i feel as if i have not found all of what this film has to offer.