"I have to declare an interest here—I was the production designer of the film. Terence Davies takes us on a fictionalized journey through his childhood. There is no story; the film is composed of memories, some long and complicated, some very short, all vivid. A shot onto a carpet in which nothing happens but movements of shadow and sunlight is memorable because so universal; a sailing ship seen in a child’s schoolroom daydream, the tortures of confused guilt, the joys of a close family life, and the loneliness of the outsider are, in one way or another, common to us all. Davies has somehow caught that essence for us."

"And I don’t want to leave this list without alluding to The Long Day Closes. It’s about many things; it’s about the strangeness and disorientation and passions of youth, but most of all it’s about vocation, the calling of an artist and how early in one’s life that vocation comes. As a boy, Richard Avedon, the photographer, covered the entrance to his bedroom with a dark curtain, punched a tiny hole into it, and watched his family all day long. And in The Long Day Closes, in myriad, tiny details, often easy to overlook, Terence Davies is showing how filmmaking comes to a very young man who one day will become a filmmaker. For some weird reason, Davies is relatively unknown, especially in this country. Why? The cinematography is so poetic. The shots are like great music."