Adapting Sunset Song: Authorial, Industrial, and National Discourses in the 2015 Film Adaptation of Sunset Song

Abstract

This article traces the discourses shaping the 2015 film adaptation of Sunset Song, directed by Terence Davies. In doing so, it shows how both the film and Lewis Grassic Gibbon's original novel are involved in complex negotiations of ideas about Scottishness. In the case of the film, this is evident in its sophisticated and poetic visual engagement with some aspects of the novel's characterization of Chris Guthrie, its use of language, and its representation of landscapes. The same negotiations are apparent in paratextual materials that demonstrate the route taken by the producers and director when navigating the fraught economic terrain of feature-length filmmaking in Scotland, both in terms of funding applications to national funder Creative Scotland, and the way it mobilized particular discourses of arthouse and auteur cinema in its marketing and production materials. Finally, through a close look at the emphasis on militarism, femininity, and landscape in the film text, the article considers how the film performs a kind of Scotland that is amenable to the tastes of the filmmaker, the desires of the public funder, and the arthouse film festival circuit where it was primarily consumed.