seen on 24 May 2022
Terence Davies directs Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi as the younger and older Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction, which while not a 'cradle to grave' biopic nevertheless examines some of the most significant episodes in the poet's life. Davies's often oblique approach to revealing character and development is exemplified by his choice only to refer to Sassoon's provocative open letter of 1917 denouncing the conduct of the war against Germany: we see the interview with his army superiors which led to his being sent to Craiglockhart, but there are only spoken references to its wider currency. Other directors might well have chosen to press the point with a scene in the House of Commons, but Davies is only interested in the immediate circumstances of his characters, and Sassoon was not present when his letter was read out there.
Jack Lowden gives a beautifully nuanced performance as the disillusioned soldier struggling also with what he may well have thought of as personal demons, whereas we now would say 'issues with his sexuality'. At Craiglockhart, the hospital near Edinburgh where Dr Rivers (Ben Daniels) was sympathetically trying to deal with the traumas of soldiers returning from the Western Front, Sassoon meets Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson) and they become close, though neither directly expresses his feelings towards the other. The horrors of the war intrude with the use of archive footage, and Lowden speaks Sassoon's verses with great sensitivity, also magnificently displayed in the recitation of 'Disabled', one of Owen's great poems, at the conclusion of the film.
Later, in the 1920's, Sassoon takes up with first Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) and then Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch), as well as being in the circle of such literary and social celebrities as Lady Ottoline Morrell (Suzanne Bertish) and Edith Sitwell (Lia Williams). These scenes give rise to some deliciously waspish barbs but the trajectory of Sassoon's life is not happy, and episodes are intercut with vignettes from the older man's life where Peter Capaldi has little more to do than be snobbish and morose. One can imagine that the consequences of regarding first the acquisition of a wife (Kate Phillips, then Gemma Jones) and then the birth of a son as 'saving him' include the slow poisoning of his temperament, but again this is only hinted at rather than directly shown. The resulting domestic scenes of the 1950s are just painful to watch: Davies is a master at showing simmering tension in people who rarely face the challenge of expressing themselves honestly, and the cruel dismissal of the older Stephen Tennant (Anton Lesser) only reinforces the notion that resentment has festered. Sassoon's late conversion to Catholicism seems only the final spasm of a man desperately trying to quell the inner turmoil of his life.
Despite the shallow brittleness of the bright young things of the 1920s, and the stultifying domestic environment a generation later, the film evinces great sympathy for its protagonist, and the quality of the acting ensures that it is compelling to watch.
