Siegfried Sassoon biopic Benediction is a downbeat however shifting movie from Terence Davies
“There is a school of thought that regards musical theatre as a second-rate means of expression”
You wouldn’t be trying to the lifetime of Siegfried Sassoon for an upbeat affair besides, there’s moments in Terence Davies’ Benediction which are simply piercingly, agonisingly unhappy. Between his experiences within the First World War, an unfulfilled emotional life as happiness eludes him whether or not sleeping by way of homosexual excessive society or settling for heterosexual marriage, and a creative profession overshadowed by others, Davies’ Sassoon is a bleakly tragic determine.
Portrayed by Jack Lowden and in later life by Peter Capaldi, the movie is freighted by the load of the large choices that one has to make in life, and the results of these actions (or lack thereof, because the case could also be). The near-impossible wrestle to face towards the Great War, insulated from censure by his officer class buddies. The problem of accepting his sexuality when his kind is merciless fairly boys. The option to marry a girl (even when she ages into the marvellous Gemma Jones…).
Thus Benediction is brutal in its scathing evaluation of its topic. As it pulls collectively tableaux of music, poetry and drama with movie reel and images from the struggle archive, an odd magnificence does emerge, significantly the place the writings of Wilfred Owen are deployed. Sassoon and Owen had a short connection – each private and inventive – and Lowden and Matthew Tennyson evince this superbly and the late deployment of the poem Disabled is nearly an excessive amount of to bear in its shifting energy.
A collection of trendy cameos pique the curiosity in a maybe much less profound method – Ben Daniels, Lia Williams and Simon Russell Beale all stand out. But they supply the lighter moments I wanted to have the ability to push by way of the darker, extra opaque sequences, significantly the place Capaldi’s despondent older Sassoon is worried, questioning whether or not his artwork or existence even mattered. One to look at, although not should you’re feeling in any respect fragile.