Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

velvalea Beautiful landscapes, a visual feast. Excellent acting. The writing is prose. Don't miss this one. My only criticism is there is a bit too much frontal nudity for me. The music is wonderful and heart felt, though I do question the choice of an American Applacian tune in the beginning. This role of the father was so well depicted. If you love film, you must see this. If you love Scotland, you must see this. If you have ever loved, you must see this. Just a haunting film. This film is "The Great Santini" meets "Joyous Noel" meets Far From the Madding Crowd". The overvoice of Christne is not to be missed, just an excellent device. This is one you will want to see again and again. This is the best historical film I have seen in years....and I have seen many.

wgingery If you're looking for "Masterpiece Theatre," keep going. This isn't that. Read the book or get the TV adaptation.This is a deeply personal testament from a gay director, re-visiting themes from his previous films: coming of age subject to a tyrannical father, the long-suffering mother, the opposition of local life and the wider world, the joy and tragedy of love.Again like all his films, it works at an almost subconscious, dreamlike level, beyond the rational or sociologically descriptive.At one point, Chrissie tells us that words, English words, are useless to express anything worth expressing.At age 70, the director is evidently fully prepared to cut his cloth to suit his needs. And here he has at his disposal some very fine stuff: book, actors, photographer, and music. While not entirely seamless, it nevertheless produces a powerful cumulative effect.The actress Agyness Deyn (pronounced Agnes Deen) gives a wonderful performance, even admitting a few places where she comes up short of the full expression of her character, Chrissie, the director's stand-in of the story. Peter Mullan, Kieth Guthrie, and Jack Greenlees are never less than fine. The waste of men -- beautiful and young, brutalized before escaping to the Argentine, or sent off to die in the war -- strikes like a punch in the guts.Davies places these people firmly in the life of the soil of Scotland with photography at times ravishingly sensuous and at other times dour and somber.Pay close attention to the music: as in all Terence Davies' films, it plays a vital part in taking us to "the place beyond words." Oddly, perhaps, it is in the depiction of sex that Davies falls short. It comes across as clinically observed, rather than experienced.It adds up to one of those films that stay with you. . . .for instance, the diagonal lines of welts on Greenlees' back are repeated in the diagonal lines of the burning whins (the straw left in the fields after the harvest), suggesting that he and the land are alike brutalized, and that violence is a necessary, inescapable component of life.

Wes Botanica I went into the movie not knowing anything about the book, the model or what should have been the proper soldiers dress. I also don't know a good accent from a bad one when it comes to Scottish.I felt the movie was gorgeous but some scenes were dragged out too long, especially closer to the end. I felt the actress was believable and saw the characters personality was much like the film itself, slow moving and deliberate with few outbursts but when they happened they were believable.I didn't understand the husband. Why not slog through it rather than become an a-hole? but I guess he was determined. To me this was stupid and the wife should have been angry, then forgiving, rather than understanding. The story was a view into what it may have been like back then helping me to see real people in real tough situations but who also had God and nature to nurture them.It is the beauty of the film that has stuck with me. I didn't know Scotland was that gorgeous.

hugh_jaeger Who were the "North Highland Regiment"? No "ladies from hell" that I've ever heard of. And why the Latin shoulder numerals "IXI"? That's not even a real or feasible Latin number.Is my sight failing, or did the soldiers' shoulder insignia say "Brecknock"? Wasn't that a battalion of the South Wales Borderers, as in "wrong Celtic country"? Did someone just find a bundle of WW1 shoulder badges on a market stall and decide to use them, without bothering to Google what regiment or even what country they were from?Laura Hollins (let's use your real name, not your gibberish fantasy one) gives birth to a baby several months old. Next thing we know, the boy is a few years old but Laura looks exactly the same age. Other reviewers have already noted other discontinuities with which this film is riddled.The slow, linear narrative is likable enough. Whether Hollins' Doric is credible is for Scots to judge. But botching basic details breaks the spell. I don't feel cheated of my ticket money. Just disappointed that such basic authenticity was botched by lazy and ignorant prop-buying and film-making.