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Terence Davies Trilogy [VHS]

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This work contains three short/shortish, black-and-white, films that Davies did for television in the 1970s and early 80s. They deal with Liverpool, homosexuality, Catholicism, mother-love, repression, and obscurity. The first, "Children," shows a youngster, Robert Tucker, his long-suffering mother and tyrannical, paranoid and perhaps insane father. The boy is just starting to wonder about his attraction to other males, particularly an older one he sees in the shower.The second opus, "Madonna and Child," portrays him as a thirtysomething man, a clerk in a shipping office, who cares for/about his mother and regularly attends church, even going to confession. He also leads a closet life unknown to the few who know him: trysts with other men, some in leather, that explore the rougher aspects of gay sex. This is shown obviously but not at length. Even when he goes to confession, he tells the priest everything except his secret life. Is it because he feels what he is doing is not really wrong? The final part, "Death and Transfiguration," shows Tucker as a very old man, dying alone in a hospital. It is depresssingly effective. At the point of death, we see him reaching out physically: to God, or to that youth he once saw in the shower? This compedium is excellent but not upbeat.