Anyone who caught my best-films-of-2023 list – either here, or in the annual Sight and Sound poll – was probably a little mystified by the title in the top spot: That They May Face the Rising Sun, by the Irish filmmaker Pat Collins. Understandably so, given that the film hadn’t been released; indeed, it had only had a couple of screenings at the London Film Festival, which meant that it was considerably less ‘on the radar’ for cinephiles than those then unreleased titles which had premiered in Cannes or Venice. No matter; it was the film that had impressed me most in 2023, and I wanted to draw attention to its existence. I’d liked it even more than such wonderful fare as Nicolas Philibert’s On the Adamant, Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes, and Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, which I put in the second, third and fourth spots on my list. Collins’ movie won me over the most because, besides feeling near-perfect in every way, it also felt utterly fresh – whereas the other three felt more familiar, being highly characteristic of their creators’ very different but equally fine bodies of work.
Actually, this film, too, is very characteristic of Collins – for me, one of the most consistently rewarding filmmakers at work today – except that it is his first fully fictional work. Though Silence (2012) and Song of Granite (2017) both include elements of fiction and people ‘acting’, most of his previous films have been documentaries of sorts, whereas That They May Face the Rising Sun is an adaptation of a novel by John McGahern (the subject of a 2005 documentary portrait by Collins); moreover, the cast, with one exception, consists of professional actors. That said, it deals with themes that have recurred in Collins’ work time and again: the importance of place, of community, of belonging, of nature, of creativity, and the constant shadows of poverty, injustice, oppression, exile, solitude… and mortality.
The film also echoes its predecessors in its quietly measured pacing, its unassertive visual beauty and its avoidance of eventful narrative. Collins is a true filmmaker who understands the value of taking the time to look and listen attentively. (One of Collins’ earliest documentaries was about Abbas Kiarostami, and it’s clear that his admiration for the Iranian’s work has paid dividends in his own approach to imagery, sound and tempo.) Rest assured, this is not ‘slow cinema’ (though 2019’s Henry Glassie: Field Work came close – with good reason, given its subject matter); That They May Face the Rising Sun may not boast a busy storyline, but it never feels drawn out. There is far too much happening between the characters for it ever to drag; it is gently paced precisely because that is appropriate to the rhythms and rites of the lives it is portraying.
The story, such as it is, centres on Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate (Anna Bederke), a couple who, in the late 1970s, have returned from London to the small rural community in Country Leitrim where Joe grew up. He’s a writer, she’s an artist with a partnership in a London gallery, so they’re regarded with affection but also a degree of wariness by the locals, most of them farmers and farmhands. Nothing extraordinary happens during the year depicted; people work, walk the lakeside, exchange words and cigarettes, share meals, visit pubs, fall out and so on. But as in McGahern’s novel, the shortest comment, the briefest glance or the smallest gesture can speak volumes.
(I was so taken by my first two viewings of Collins’ film that I decided to read the novel. That proved rewarding not only because the book is a marvel in itself but because seeing how Collins and his co-writer Éamon Little adapted it – losing, changing or conflating characters and parts of the narrative – made me appreciate all the more the wisdom of their choices and the magnitude of their achievement.)
The strengths of That They May Face the Rising Sun derive in no small part from Collins’ skill as a documentarist; he has a wonderful eye and ear for telling details, and knows that things don’t need to be spelt out in order to to be eloquent. But they also reveal – and this is what, perhaps, feels new in this latest work – his expertise as a dramatist and his way with actors. Seldom in films do we get such a vivid sense of people actually listening and responding to what others are saying and doing: the quick passing glances between Kate and Joe (here, unlike in the book, made a writer, presumably in allusion to McGahern himself), as they engage in tea, biscuits and banter with their various neighbours, convey with great clarity a complex mix of thoughts and emotions. A simple long shot from behind of a man pausing as he walks his bicycle up a slope becomes deeply affecting, given the few details we have heard, in passing, about his life over in England.
At first the film seems to be comprised almost entirely of small friendly moments of little discernible consequence until, now and then, the heat of anger, resentment or regret makes itself felt, and we realise that things are not, perhaps, as we first assumed. Slowly, stealthily, subtly – but very surely indeed – the tender everyday narrative builds toward an extraordinary scene of a sacred ritual that takes in love, fear, loss, fear of betrayal – and an acknowledgement of that inevitability shared by all of us. There is a stark, beautiful honesty about That They May Face the Rising Sun that transcends the deceitful cliches of most movies with seemingly effortless ease. Agreed, it is small and quiet and it has no ‘stars’ – but it does have several great performances, perhaps most memorably those by Lalor Roddy and Sean McGinley. But in its own modest, magical, heartrending way, it is as profoundly moving and humane, as ‘real’ and rich in meaning, as anything I have seen in a very long while.
It is, nevertheless, a ‘small’ film, however big its heart and wise its head, so it may not be around that long on cinema screens. May I suggest you catch it if and while you can. You can find the trailer here.
Pat Collins’ That They May Face the Rising Sun will screen in the UK from Friday 26 April onwards. Likewise Ireland, I think, though since I posted this, I read that it won the Best Film prize at the Irish Film and Television Academy awards, so it may have been screened domestically beforehand.
notes and observations by Geoff Andrew 