These three semi-autobiographical short films by Terence Davies follow the journey of Robert Tucker, first seen as a hangdog child in "Children" (1976), then as a hollow-eyed middle-aged man in "Madonna and Child" (1980), and finally as a decrepit old man in "Death and Transfiguration" (1983). Dreamlike and profoundly moving.
In sepia tones, the film moves back and forth among three periods in Robert Tucker's life: he's an old man, near death, in a nursing home at Christmas time; he's in middle age caring for his cheerful but dying mother; he's a lad at Catholic school, practicing his catechism, going to confession for the first time, receiving the Eucharist, surrounded by the singing of a children's choir. In middle age, he looks through his scrapbook of photographs of muscular men; he recalls lovers and his mother's cremation. A nurse sits beside him on his last night; in his last breath, he reaches forward and back.
