Benediction **** (2021, Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeremy Irvine, Calam Lynch, Kate Phillips, Gemma Jones, Ben Daniels) – Movie Review

Scottish actor Jack Lowden (born 2 June 1990).

Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi lead Terence Davies’s 2021 drama film Benediction, based on the life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon, also starring late actor Julian Sands.

The 2021 biographical drama film Benediction is written and directed by Terence Davies, and stars Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi as the young and older versions of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, along with Simon Russell Beale, Jeremy Irvine, Calam Lynch, Kate Phillips, Gemma Jones, Geraldine James, Julian Sands and Ben Daniels.

Terence Davies has bitten off a large chew with the entire life of Siegfried Sassoon, an incredibly eventful, complicated life that raises so many issues that 137 minutes doesn’t seem enough to cover them, while at the same time celebrating Sassoon’s poetry and ideas, along with a few tunes and dances of the time.

Nevertheless, he boldly goes, and achieves a very great deal. The timely anti-war messages come over loud and clear, with helpful newsreel images of the battles, and the appalling damage, both physical and mental, to individuals who manage to survive, and a check list of the unbelievable numbers of the dead. At the same time Terence Davies is busy celebrating gay lives of the era, many of them once famous, now forgotten. This however proves the trickiest part of the film. Unfortunately, a lot of the characters come over as a bunch of rancid stereotypes. Davies is telling it like it was, or he thinks it was.

Sassoon comes over in a noble sort of way, as a pioneering kind of gay man, but then he becomes a victim, and afterwards his sudden and later failed marriage makes him seem weak-minded, and his eventual incarnation into a bitter, tormented old man isn’t kind of very encouraging or cheery. This is a pretty miserable film, telling a pretty miserable story of lives and times that could have been so much better – …if. And, that must be the point.

It is a tale of disorder, lives led in unnecessary, pointless misery and pain, when people could have been happy and fulfilled. All the ingredients for happiness were there, but look what happened – war, disrespect, and all that talent and all those resources wasted. England, indeed, was a waste land. Perhaps these weren’t the Bright Young Things after all, maybe they were as dim as Toc H lamps, their wasteful frivolity disguised by their acid, invariably hurtful wit.

Incidentally Davies’s dialogue is very eloquent and witty, though most of the characters speak in the same voice, the same witty tone. But then they were members of the same set of young Bohemian aristocrats and socialites, so they might well actually all have spoken in the one similar voice. That could get tiring and tiresome after a while.

Can we learn anything from these events and these folk of more than a century ago. Or are they just characters from a biographical dictionary we should know a little about or long-forgotten ancestors from a waxworks, mysteriously brought back to life by a mad showman?

Jack Lowden has most of the film to himself and is good as the troubled young Sassoon, Capaldi is as haunting as he is haunted as the old Sassoon, Simon Russell Beale does well as gay writer Robbie Ross, and Ben Daniels is strong as kindly doctor psychiatrist Dr Rivers. But poor Jeremy Irvine has a thankless task as actor/ composer Ivor Novello, who is portrayed as a vicious, promiscuous narcissist. Irvine looks nothing like Novello, but then most of the actors don’t resemble their real-life characters. Hardly anyone knows what Novello looks like now, so it must be a case of who cares? Kate Phillips as Sassoon’s wife Hester Gatty and Gemma Jones as Older Hester Gatty are both sidelined. Calam Lynch has a better time as TB-afflicted, florid aristocrat the Hon. Stephen Tennant, with whom Sassoon started a six-year relationship.

Davies films very adroitly, employing the Steadicam and CGI images with grace and style. It is a confident, plush-looking, expertly achieved movie.

The World War One part of the story is previously told in the 1997 British-Canadian co-production Regeneration [Behind the Lines] with Jonathan Pryce as Dr Rivers and James Wilby as Siegfried Sassoon.

Benediction had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 12 September 2021 and screened at the BFI Flare festival in March 2022.

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967).

The cast are Jack Lowden as Siegfried Sassoon, Peter Capaldi as Older Siegfried Sassoon, Simon Russell Beale as Robbie Ross, Jeremy Irvine as Ivor Novello, Kate Phillips as Hester Gatty, Gemma Jones as Older Hester Gatty, Ben Daniels as Dr Rivers, Calam Lynch as Stephen Tennant, Anton Lesser as Older Stephen Tennant, Tom Blyth as Glen Byam Shaw, Matthew Tennyson as Wilfred Owen, Geraldine James as Theresa Thornycroft, Richard Goulding as George Sassoon, Lia Williams as Edith Sitwell, Suzanne Bertish as Lady Ottoline Morrell, Julian Sands as Chief Medical Officer, Jude Akuwudike as Priest, and Giovanna Ria as Nurse.

Film director Terence Davies.

British screenwriter and film director Terence Davies died aged 77. His manager John Taylor said: ‘I am deeply saddened to announce the death of Terence Davies, who died peacefully at home in his sleep after a short illness on Saturday October 7 2023.;

© Derek Winnert 2022 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com