<span>"Sunset Song," about a rural Scottish girl growing to womanhood in the years before World War I, is one of the great director Terence Davies' best films: an example of old school and new school mentalities coming together to create a challenging and unique experience. The movie feels as if it could have been made in the 1940s, were there no such thing as censorship. There's frank sex and violence, and the movie doesn't shy away from the nastier aspects of life in that time and place. But there's never a feeling that Davies is rubbing our noses in suffering, because the film displays so much empathy for its characters and such awareness of the social, political and historical forces that hover beyond the edges of their consciousness.</span>
