Young, Gay, and Sad

Movies: Benediction

Directed by Terence Davies, Benediction is a slow, meditative, melancholic film about the life of poet Siegfried Sassoon. I didn't realize until near the end of the film that I watched it on Veteran's Day, which is very appropriate given that Sassoon served in WWI and went on to be staunchly anti-war.

The film opens with Sassoon writing a letter to his commanding officer stating that he will no longer serve in a war that he feels is being prolonged on purpose by the powers that be. This letter, titled Finished with the War: A Solider's Declaration states, "I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest."

Sassoon was declared unfit to serve due to shell shock and sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital to convalesce, which pissed Sassoon off since he would have preferred a court martial, which would have allowed him to further express his anti-war opposition in public. Even though he potentially would have faced execution, Sassoon wanted to take the risk of dying for his beliefs rather than being declared emotionally unfit and hidden away in a hospital. This is the first of many blows life dealt Sassoon.

A significant chunk of the movie is dedicated to exploring Sassoon's sexuality and his many affairs with men throughout the 1920s before he finally married a woman, Hester Gatty, and fathered a son. The film bounces back and forth between Sassoon's later years in life, when he is a very sad and angry older man who converts to Catholicism as a way to find some measure of peace, and the his younger, more hopeful years. Jack Lowden plays the young Sassoon who, perhaps not surprisingly for a poet, is a romantic. Two significant relationships are explored: one with actor Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine), who is cruel, preening, faithless, and catty, and one with aristocrat Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch), who is capricious, fey, and also not a super nice guy.

What's interesting is that Benediction really aims to give the viewer more of an impression than accurate or clear details. Watching the movie, you might think that Novello was the great love of Sassoon's life, given the amount of time spent on their relationship. But, in fact, Sassoon's relationship with Tennant not only lasted longer (6 years), but was also far more devastating and impactful on Sassoon's life. When Tennant abruptly broke things off with Sassoon via a letter, Sassoon went on to marry Gatty, whom he stayed with for decades. Much of the context and timeline I gathered from reading the Wikipedia article about Sassoon and not from the film, which is rather confusing.

Peter Capaldi plays Sassoon as an older, depressed man. It's an interesting casting choice since Capaldi doesn't look much like an older version of Lowden, and Capaldi's thick Scottish brogue is incongruous with the fact that Sassoon was English. Gemma Jones plays the older version of Hester Gatty, which is also a strange casting choice since she looks as old as, if not older than, Capaldi--but in actuality Gatty was two decades younger than Sassoon. 

So, clearly this movie has some flaws and questionable choices. But as an impressionistic piece about a man with a beautiful soul and mind who tries to find steadfast love but never quite finds it, it's a very good movie. The film is interspersed with Lowden in voiceover reading Sassoon's poetry over footage from WWI. There is a wistfulness that permeates the film, and a beauty as well. This is very much a movie that is not for everyone and I don't even know if it's a movie for me. I've only seen one other Davies film, Deep Blue Sea, and I didn't care for that one. That said, I was surprised at how quickly and easily this long film (2 hours and 17 minutes) flew by. 

Overall, I have to give Benediction a positive score because it really is a beautiful film. My bias in favor of sad, young, gay, white men might be skewing my thoughts a bit, but oh well! I love my sad, young, gay, white men and I will not apologize!

I'll end my review with the words of another reviewer, from Vox, who really sums up Benediction perfectly: "There is no happy-go-lucky ending here, only the sense that an ineffable longing we have, to know and be known, is so precious and rare that most of us never find its fulfillment here on Earth. But the film's title lays bare its aims: to offer words of blessing over a man who never quite found the love he craved and, yet, kept looking." 

Grade: A-