Film

The Long Day Closes

Name: The Long Day Closes
Genre: Drama
Released: 1992
Cast: Leigh McCormack, Marjorie Yates, Anthony Watson, Nicholas Lamont, Ayse Owens

Coming-of-age
Slow-burning

Terence Davies's luminous memory piece follows Bud, a sensitive gay boy in 1950s Liverpool who escapes into cinema and daydream. Tender, elliptical, suffused with longing—less narrative than a series of accumulated moments. A film that feels like being inside someone's most private thoughts, achingly beautiful for anyone who's ever felt like they didn't belong.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love films about how movies can shape a lonely childhood, and you're happy to let a mood or a shaft of light carry the story rather than plot.

Skip it if you need incidents to keep you hooked, since very little happens here and the lulls between scenes stretch longer than you might want.

What it asks of you: Expect long, unhurried takes, repeated rituals at home and school, and quiet stretches where the camera simply waits; it rewards stillness more than close attention to dialogue.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

My Beautiful Laundrette1985

Another '80s British film about a young man navigating sexuality and class in a working-class milieu. Stephen Frears directs with warmth and specificity, finding both humour and genuine tenderness in the everyday.

But The tonal shifts can feel jarring if you want a steady emotional through-line; some viewers find it frustratingly loose.

Moonlight2016

Three chapters in a young Black man's life, building toward an understanding of self. Like Davies, Barry Jenkins composes in silence and glances. The intimacy is almost unbearable, and the final scene will wreck you.

But Its deliberate pacing asks patience; if you need plot momentum, you'll find the film remote.

Get Real1998

A British film about a closeted teenage boy falling for a classmate. Warm, funny, utterly sincere—it captures the specific ache of first love and the courage needed just to be honest.

But It's earnest and straightforward where The Long Day Closes is dreamy; some find it too neat.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Long Day Closes

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Singin' in the Rain1952

The Long Day Closes is about the redemptive power of cinema itself. Singin' in the Rain is what transcendence looks like when you're watching from the dark.

The film Bud would escape into. Pure artifice and joy—tap dancing, colour, impossible romance. Davies positions cinema as salvation, and this is the ecstatic proof that it can be.

But It's aggressively cheerful and camp in a way that requires surrender. If you resist that, it's exhausting.

Carol2015

Todd Haynes's handsomely composed meditation on desire and class. Long takes, muted colours, a woman learning herself through love. Quietly devastating and formally perfect.

But The pacing is glacial and nothing happens in the way plot usually demands. It's a mood, not a story.

A Prayer Before Dawn2018

A British boxer in Thailand confronts himself through violence and discipline. Joe Cole delivers one of the finest quiet performances in recent cinema; the film moves like a fever dream.

But It's bleak, occasionally brutal, and offers no comfort. The boxing scenes are exhausting rather than exhilarating.

Tomboy2011

Céline Sciamma follows a ten-year-old who presents as a boy to their new community. Tender, unsentimental, and achingly true about self-discovery and the fragility of childhood.

But It's in French with subtitles, and the ending may frustrate those seeking resolution.

This Is England2007

Shane Meadows's raw account of a lonely boy drawn into a skinhead gang in '80s England. It's brutal and true, with moments of genuine care beneath the surface rage.

But The violence is unflinching; the second half darkens considerably into territory that's hard to watch.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

Yorgos Lanthimos crafts a slow-burn nightmare about a surgeon haunted by his past. Formal, strange, hypnotic—guilt made visible through misery and precision.

But It's deliberately claustrophobic and upsetting; the pacing is designed to unsettle rather than comfort.

God's Own Country2017

A Yorkshire farmer and a seasonal worker fall into an unexpected connection. Intimate, sensual, rooted in landscape and labour—about two men finding themselves through each other.

But The dialogue is sparse and regional; some find the mumbled Yorkshire too impenetrable to settle into.

The Butcher Boy1998

Both films use childhood perception to crack open the gap between what adults pretend is normal and what a sensitive child actually experiences. Both are Irish, both love cinema's power to transform pain.

Neil Jordan's film of Patrick McCabe's novel: a boy's fractured consciousness amid Irish poverty and religious suffocation. Surreal, anarchic, blackly funny—cinema as the interior landscape of trauma.

But It's deliberately disturbing and tonally chaotic; the satire is savage and uncomfortable.

A Ghost Story2017

Both films are about how the past refuses to leave us, and how we revisit it obsessively. Both use formal choices (Davies's memory-like editing, Lowery's boxy frame) to externalize interior states. Both are elegies.

David Lowery's grief-stricken meditation on time, loss, and the haunt of memory. Shot in boxy Academy ratio, it's formally radical yet quiet—a man returns as a ghost to the places he loved.

But It moves at glacial tempo; there is almost no plot. Some find it pretentious rather than profound.