“THE MIND IS ITS OWN PLACE, AND IN ITSELF CAN MAKE A HEAVEN OF HELL, A HELL OF HEAVEN.” — John Milton, Paradise Lost
i love how this film make his mother becomes this strange dual symbol: comfort and confinement. a madonna figure, divine but also a warden. in a way, she mirrors the god robert’s been taught to worship. omnipotent, like a god who doesn’t smite you but watches so closely you forget how to move freely. her love is the kind that’s so consuming, it leaves no room for him to grow beyond it.
robert’s relationship with his mother is both tender and suffocating. he loves her and cares for her, but there’s something about their closeness that freezes him in place. like freud’s idea of the
oedipal bind twisted inward not about desire, but about emotional dependency. he can’t fully become himself because she’s still the center of his orbit.
he doesn’t literally despise his queerness but he’s terrified of what it means in the eyes of god or maybe even his own mother. Søren Kierkegaard talked about despair as being
out of sync with yourself. i see that in robert. he knows what he wants, but can’t accept it. so he punishes himself like a loop of guilt and yearning that won’t end.
the film quietly critiques how religious systems can harm more than heal. for queer people like robert, faith becomes less about redemption and more about endurance. terence davies doesn’t give easy answers, but he shows what it’s like to live in that space between shame and silence, between a mother’s love and the fear of hell.
#38 : european film | the second part of terence davies’ trilogy |
the criterion challenge 2025 |
my short film memoir ⋆｡˚ 
