Terence Davies’s lyrical version of the Scottish classic finds the veteran director at the height of his powers

Back in the dark days when the UK Film Council was merrily throwing money at the shameful Sex Lives of the Potato Men, British film-making legend Terence Davies was finding it impossible to fund a screen adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel, Sunset Song, a hardscrabble tale of a young woman finding her identity – personal, national, spiritual – in rural northeast Scotland beneath the gathering clouds of the Great War. Despite the critical success of The House of Mirth, his 2000 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel, Davies feared he might never trouble our cinema screens again. It wasn’t until his superb, low-budget love letter to Liverpool, Of Time and the City, became the unexpected toast of Cannes in 2008 that the skies started to brighten for our pre-eminent auteur. Now, with...