It’s strange to say that a biopic of a prominent figure could simultaneously be the most personal film of the filmmaker, yet this appears to be the case with Terence Davies’ Benediction. Retaining poetic inspiration following the Emily Dickinson portrait A Quiet Passion, Davies turns his attention to the post-combat years of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon. It’s stately, mannered and deeply sad affair in which Davies has poured himself into a Sassoon-shaped mould. The Davies that he presents in interviews is very much present in his subject, played beautifully by Jack Lowden in his youth and by Peter Capaldi in later life. Very much a passion project, there is some self-indulgence and a curious flatness to the presentation, but its unabashed, almost painful earnestness is what makes it affecting.
Benediction follows Sassoon from his wartime dissension and admission to a military psychiatric hospital through to embittered and lonely old age. Davies’ structure takes a non-linear approach, jumping between important instances in Sassoon’s life and illustrating them with snatches of his poetry. The aim is not to grab at the unravelling tails of a particular muse or to catch a literary hero flushed with inspiration. Rather, this is a man slowly being whittled down to a husk right from the beginning of his prominence and if he is accompanied by a muse at all, it’s more Thanatos than Calliope.
The formidable Capaldi is predictably fine but his Sassoon is already ossified into terminal disaffection. It’s Lowden who takes the plaudits with his delicate turn that has all the seeds of his late-life alienation planted within but retaining the verve, wit, and charm that the Western Front didn’t quite manage to scoop out of him. What Lowden gets across so well is of a man who increasingly goes through the motions. There’s a hooded watchfulness in all his interactions, a sense that all social engagements are undertaken with an anthropological interest. There is clear survivor guilt. There is also a real inner conflict about his post-war endeavours. He desires to be part of the dazzling circle of artists and aesthetes he befriends or seduces, yet he clearly resents them and sees them as frivolous; hating the casual cruelty they inflict on each other.
The bulk of the narrative concerns Sassoon’s life as a more-or-less openly gay man among the ‘bright young things’ of the 1920s social scene, and his relationships with Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) and Stephen Tennant (Calum Lynch), both of whom are depicted as fatuous and callous, and who treat Sassoon as appallingly. This pattern of romantic masochism and self-flagellation prefigures the older Sassoon’s conversion to Catholicism. The non-linear depiction of these also gives the depiction a doomed inevitability, that in his broken and isolated old age lay the destiny he always felt he deserved. The implied tragedy of course, is that Davies believes this applies to him too.
While a lyrical and haunting piece, visually Benediction is slightly lacking. The photography feels flat and televisual, and the scene in which Sassoon hurls his Military Cross into the Mersey is bafflingly rendered in some awful CGI. The overlaid footage of a sombre Sassoon with background footage of the war works better, the poet’s words appearing to haunt him as much as the brutality of the conflict. While the visual presentation could be more accomplished, Davies certainly deserves credit for attempting a different approach to the biopic, especially the literary biopic, which is notoriously difficult to depict with cinematic aplomb. It mainly succeeds, in no small part due to the lacerating presence of self Terence Davies brings to bear on his subject. This is far removed from prestige Oscar bait. Benediction‘s appeal may be limited, but its flaws are like the imperfections in a diamond.
Screening as part of Glasgow Film Festival 2022