What makes it different from others?

Absolutely amazing

A Major Disappointment

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I recently checked this out on the recommendations of the other two reviewers here. I'd agree to a greater of lesser extent with both of them; it's a remarkable film, quite unlike anything else but with definitely hints of other influences, such as Stanley Spencer's Cookham paintings. It's quirky, whimsical, bucolic and unutterably English (and even specifically east Anglian).However, these descriptions of the film left me entirely unprepared for a sequence towards the end involving a series of rapes. It's a fairly long chunk of the film, about five or six minutes, and it's deeply disturbing to watch. Just to be absolutely clear on this, I don't think that this makes it a bad film, or that the scenes shouldn't have been included; but I do think people have a right to know that there's more rape in this than in some films actually about rape.

I really wanted to enjoy this film but found it hard going. It moves very slowly and the story if there is one hardly gets going. The film is really photographic essay and on that level it works. The photograph is very delicate, with very carefully crafted scenes. The sound is a bit muffed. Sound like a layer on top of the picture. The BFI is right to back this films but I don't think it would have wide appeal. The extras that come with the main film are also hard going. I don't think many people will enjoy this film and I am unlikely to watch it again. Maybe in a cinema on a large scene it would work much better. The print stock is very grainy, and in my own view it has very little charm.

I have in vane been trying to getting my hands on this for years, but it does not seem to be available anywhere. I remember with exquisite clarity the two times it was shown on Swedish TV in the late seventies, I was simply stunned. Twice. The simplistic and almost naive storytelling, advancing on several planes, is as ethereal as the conclusion is obvious and prosaic. Cast mainly with amateurs, this wonderful piece of a film has no equal - but an aura of Koyaanisqatsi.The slow and almost dull ingress as (simplisticly) described in most sites on the net is (quote) "The churchyard keeper of a village church in the county of Suffolk, England, reviews the life and lifestyle of those villages as it evolved following the widespread introduction of machinery."In my view this is an almost chauvinistic way of describing the alienation any aging human is increasingly feeling in a world spinning out of control and changing at an unsustainable rate. True, to fully appreciate the film you'd have to be a romantic - but in the end, this is what we will all become.The key scene (in my view) is a duality, in a flashback showing a cherished memory of the keeper, cutting back to the present to show a scene with young people which in time may be a similarly cherished memory to them. But what happens next makes clear the abyss that must be bridged to bring understanding between generations, even when they are not that different from each others.Addition: As some of you readers have already pointed out this film is now available on DVD/Bluray from British Film Institute, I bought my copy via British Amazon. Pictures as vivid as I remember, maybe the sound felt a bit muffled.