Mark Reviews Movies: BENEDICTION

Benediction, Roadside Attractions

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 2, 2022

Some of Siegfried Sassoon's contemporaries were more famous and more successful than he was, and maybe greater recognition would have brought the poet some peace. Millions of Sassoon's contemporaries died in the Great War, in which he also fought and the fighting of which he publicly dismissed, so maybe there simply was no possibility of the man finding anything approaching peace. He tries in Benediction, writer/director Terence Davies' slightly unfocused but pointed biography of Sassoon. He tries and tries until he is old, exhausted, and still haunted by the potential of a life that, for all intents and purposes, never actually began for him.

There is a lot of that life in Davies' film, which begins with a younger Siegfried, played by Jack Lowden, denouncing the world war in 1917 and ends with an older Siegfried, played by Peter Capaldi, a few years before the writer's death in 1967. The stories of the two Siegfrieds—the younger and the elder—don't play off each other here, save for a couple moments of notable editing. In one scene, we go from the soldier, cynical and traumatized by his experiences on the front lines, to the old man, sitting in a church with the notion of converting to Catholicism in his later years.

It's a subtly telling moment that establishes the course of the man's life before we witness it. No matter what may happen to Siegfried as he rebels against the war and convalesces in a psychiatric hospital and has many affairs with men and starts a family, he will end up in this place—looking for answers in the unknown, because nothing he has known of his life and this world has brought him comfort. The other, similar moment of cross-cutting comes immediately at the end, in a juxtaposition of staging and emotion that solidifies the same idea, only in reverse.

That's the inherent of strength of Davies' film, which gradually becomes a bit too busy with characters, ideas, tones, and historical details to really find its footing as a consistent, informative biography. That's disappointing, if only because the early sections of this film, which focus on Siegfried's time during the war, are thoughtful, incisive, and feature a clear narrative and thematic through line. Meanwhile the last section, which offers glimpses of the everyday disappointments and frustrations of a man who wanted so much more—or maybe so much less—from life, is ambitious in how the man's sorrow serves as the foundation of his existence.

In between those two sections is something far more straightforward and, to a certain extent, inherently comedic. That middle part details Siegfried's various relationships, most of them with romantic partners, over the years, and it possesses the enjoyment of intelligent people wooing and sparring with quick wits, as well as considered depiction of the social maneuvering of being gay at a time when that existence was treated as a crime. Within the context of the story's early righteous cynicism and its later slide into existential melancholy, a good bulk of Siegfried's story feels like a distraction. That's the point, of course, for a man looking everywhere and anywhere for solace and contentment, but that doesn't make the switch toward social comedy and relationship melodrama any less jarring.

Still, there's much to admire here, not only within the film's bookend sections, but also within the distractions. The first section follows the young Siegfried, having written a condemnation of the political motives that are still driving the war and resulting in unnecessary slaughter. Saved from a potentially fatal court-martial by his long-time friend and mentor Robbie Ross (Simon Russell Beale), Siegfried is sent to a Scottish war hospital, where he is treated by Dr. Rivers (Ben Daniels), who is also secretly gay, and befriended by fellow poet Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson).

Many strengths exist here, from the clear-eyed depiction of Siegfried, played with real intelligence and insight by Lowden, as a man wracked by anger, guilt, uncertainty, and trauma, as he deals with the deaths of a brother, fellow soldiers, and his own ideals. Davies' technique is particularly noticeable and effective in the way he brings Sassoon's poetry to vivid life, using staged vignettes (One at the end—technically not a Sassoon piece—that focuses on a wounded veteran is especially poignant) and archival footage from the war. The marriage of a medium of imagined images and tangible ones is potent.

Most of the remaining story does follow Siegfried in his social climbing, surrounding himself with people who are more and—in some amusing way—less talented than him, and his romantic affairs, primarily with the mercurially cruel musical theater actor/composer Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) and the vain aristocrat Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch). There's an abundance of characters, relationships, and conflicts here—so much so that Davies often bypasses simple introductions or seemingly vital context to who these people are and what they do. The tone mostly remains light, breezy, and comical, which means it loses most of that sense of the real goal of Siegfried's search for happiness amidst high society, the arts, and various loves.

It is drolly amusing, though. Additionally, the real impact of how much Siegfried's experiences, the people who come into and go from his life, and emptiness he is left with by the end of his youth comes crashing down in the film's final act, embodied by Capaldi's quietly devastated performance. As a biography, then, Benediction feels too rushed and condensed. Ultimately, though, Davies' film is worthwhile as a story that cuts to the emotional, psychological, and artistic core of its subject.

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