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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The First Two Parts of Bill Douglas's Celebrated Trilogy, 15 Jan 2001
These two films form the first two parts of Bill Douglas's childhood trilogy, which are based on the director's own upbringing in the small mining village of Newcraighall, just outside Edinburgh.Douglas shows the effects of grinding poverty and emotional abuse on his alter-ego, Jamie, played by the late Stephen Archibald, and his half-brother Tommy. This is a world of casual brutality, where hopes are routinely stifled and where almost everyone suffers in silence. There is a palpable sense of nameless loss and grief permeating almost every frame of these films. My Childhood is perhaps the more lyrical of the two films, showing Jamie achieving some sort of release when he hitches a ride on the coal train after the death of his granny. The scenes in which he befriends the German POW are amongst the most tender in Douglas's output: they are so simple it is almost as if he is filming pure emotion. My Ain Folk is a much darker film, and is perhaps Bill Douglas's greatest film. The family seems to become more extended and dysfunctional than ever: nameless adults come and go, only stopping long enough to shout and fight and disappear in a cloud of repressed emotion and self-hatred. The awful spectre of Jamie's 'bad' granny looms over the film: a more spiteful - and perhaps pitiful -character I have yet to see. This film has a force that is literally physical. ...Yet for all their cruelty, these are stunningly beautiful and simple films: think of Bresson, but with immeasurably more emotional impact. The trilogy has been described as one of the heroic achievements of cinema, and it is difficult to disagree. Bill Douglas has taken the raw and painful material of his own life to fashion three of the greatest films of all time. These are criminally underrated and neglected films. If you care about cinema you must see them. They will stay with you for ever.
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