She really wanted to become a teacher, but life had other plans for her. In fact, it just happens that Chris Guthrie – whose coming-of-age story of becoming a responsible young woman is told in Sunset Song – does not go to Aberdeen. Instead, she stays in Kinraddie, takes over the parental farm and keeps on working there. Of course accompanied by a man, Ewan, who is strong and good and hardworking, but not a warrior. And the First World War gets underway and casts its long shadows onto north-east Scotland, darkening the life of a simple, modest but happy family.
Financing the project was difficult, but Davies eventually succeeded in making this adaptation of the first part of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's literary trilogy "A Scots Quair" from 1932. The film was shot in both Scotland and New Zealand, which helped to add some spectacular landscape footage. And it is in these landscapes where Davies opens up the familiar historical inner spaces of his characters. It is from the outside, from nature, that the protagonist draws her power, and Davies adopts her perspective without resorting to sentimentality or cynicism. It just happens.
