Benediction

dir: Terence Davies

2022

It seems almost redundant saying that a film made by Terence Davies is a sad one, because…If you’ve seen any of his films, especially his more auto-biographical ones, you know. This one, however, is a biopic, of the life of the poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden, as the younger version) who fought in and then rejected the underlying premises of the so-called Great War, before he was institutionalised for his disobedience.

He writes to his superiors with exasperated disgust that his betters have been lying to the poor soldiers going off to die, and so they fight under false pretences. As such he rejects their authority in sending him off again, and objects, conscientiously or otherwise, to the war itself.

If he were a poorer man, they might have fucked him up royally for defying the right of Empire to do as it will. But as he is from a wealthy family, well…

Unlike the way those kinds of stories usually go, he was neither mistreated, lobotomised nor electro-shocked half to death. He merely had some chats with a sympathetic doctor (a very gentle and charming Ben Daniels, in a film filled with charming but not gentle people), and meets one of (I think) the loves of his life, being Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson).

The slight, pale Owen, who stutters and seems quite fearful, if we, the audience, know of him, it’s in the context of his famous poetry about just how horrible being in the trenches was. His poem Dulce et Decorum est must have been taught to every school kid throughout the Commonwealth, or at least the schoolboys, back in the 1980s. Or maybe I should narrow it down further to those of us who were taught out of Seven Centuries of Poetry in English…

After they spend a brief enough time together, Owen is deemed to be fit for service again, and is sent off for the purposes of irony to be killed a week before the end of the war.

Oh cruellest fate. If Sassoon didn’t have enough disgust for the war and the Empire beforehand, he has even more cause now.

His chats with the good doctor allow him, in that safe space, to confess to often experiencing the love for his fellow man that dare not speaketh its name, which the doctor himself mentions he has experienced himself. The question is made of how one is meant to live this life in an era where people without enough connections can still be destroyed for it.

Discretion seems to be the key. Also, being rich seems to help.

We are also talking about people who specifically were friends of Oscar Wilde’s. Another figure who seemed to organise the stay at the institution in order to forestall a firing squad is Robbie Ross (Simon Russell Beale), himself a gentle protector of Sassoon and the executor of Wilde’s literary estate. In other words people who lived a certain lifestyle knowing that if they pissed off the wrong person, it could be jail or worse for them.

Early in the film the setting seems to jump way into the future, as an elderly Sassoon (here played by Peter Capaldi, perpetually typecast as an angry old man) argues with his son about why he’s converting to Catholicism, much to his son’s disgust. And soon after we see the ceremony where Siegfried is asked the essential questions that constitute the baptism; the rejection of the devil and all his powerful, earthly delights.

I mention this because, contrasted with the scenes with the doctor still in the sanatorium, Sassoon wonders why he subjects himself to these searing, caustic sessions (ie., mild chats in salubrious surroundings), and the doctor asserts that it’s because Sassoon requires these sessions as a cleansing of the soul.

Just like Catholic confession.

So, if you’re wondering what any of this means, as to what it means that someone from a Jewish background who’s clearly gay who late in life converts to Catholicism, one of the most notoriously anti-gay of all the anti-gay religions, which is most of them, well, the flick isn’t going to spell it out for you.

Also, I mentioned a flash forward where Sassoon is arguing with his son – a somewhat out and proud gay man in the 20s and 30s who has a son? In the immortal words of Keenan Thompson playing gameshow host Diondre Cole, What’s Up with That?

The out and proud thing is a lot of a misnomer on my part. Sassoon has actual boyfriends, partners and such, and doesn’t seem at any stage to be at risk of vilification or of being run out of town on a rail. But it is understood as to when and where it is safe in order to avoid public or state scrutiny, seeing as he’s part of the demi monde, the lively artistic set, with its patrons and protectors. He is pursued, somehow, by society matrons, and is called upon to give very sullen recitations of his poetry. It’s not heavily emphasised, but he seems to be respected and feted by people who it is important to be respected and feted by.

Notorious critic and poet Edith Sitwell (Lia Williams) demands his attendance at her events, and then hauls him over the coals afterwards for his opinions. When her latest performance elicits, in her own words, “titters” from the audience, she is morose about how poorly it has been received or understood. Sassoon assures her that the world’s appreciation will develop, in time.

“Think of Stravinsky”, he says, referring to how there were alleged riots after the first performance of The Rite of Spring, but it later became world renowned.

In her snootiest voice she archly intones “But I’d rather NOT think of Stravinsky”.

If I’m making it sound like all the dialogue is as pithy and witty as a play from the era, either Shaw or Wilde or whoever else, well, the shoe fits, so why not? Everyone speaks with pithy wittiness or witty pithiness, especially our main man Sassoon, who has to be the wittiest and the saddest in his own story.

He takes up with the beautiful and vicious Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) who writes and performs dreary songs for the rich and infamous. Up to this point I wondered whether all of Sassoon’s loves would be unrequited, or at least not physical, but yeah, no, it’s not subtle. Not only do they have sex, but they essentially become a couple in public, despite the fact that Novello already seems to be in another relationship, maybe two?

None of this bodes well, we feel, mostly because everything Ivor says isn’t just tinged with meanness, it’s dripping with it. And upon being introduced to Sasson’s mother (Geraldine James), she asks her son if this is just one of his “pretty boys”, to which the son demurs, saying this is something deeper.

She is unhappy with this, not for the reasons you might suspect, given the time and place, but because Ivor has such cruel eyes.

Mothers sometimes see what their sons cannot, and in this she seems a better judge of character than naïve, in love, Siegfried. You feel bad for him since Ivor is clearly a tremendous piece of shit, but also because, given this movie, given what this movie seems to be saying about Sasson’s life, he was never going to be happy.

After a few more affairs, with some more decent men, he seems to reach that point that a lot of men of his milieu, regardless of their actual preferences or proclivities, would set themselves aside (at least temporarily) and actually marry.

It is impossible not to think of Evelyn Waugh at certain points. Someone actually says the phrase “Bright Young Things” early on, referring to the generation of party animals in the 1920s that Sassoon and Waugh were considered to be part of. And with the whole conversion to Catholicism stuff, with parts seeming like they’re Straight Outta Brideshead Revisited.

And speaking of (probably) gay men who, like, married a woman (eww): One of Sasson’s friends, clearly profoundly gay, says to him earlier that he’s going to get married, and from then on we know it’s only a matter of time, as we see him bumping into Hester (Kate Phillips as the younger one, Gemma Jones as the destroyed elder) again and again until it finally takes.

What does this mean? I have no idea. The film never articulates what it means for a clearly gay man to marry a woman and start a family. It doesn’t have the scope to incorporate ideas like bisexuality or even what it means to him to set aside his past feelings for and relationships with other men.

The result we see, however, is a miserable old man with a son he can’t relate to and a shell shocked wife. Is this because of all he lost, is it because of his reminiscences of the war? Is it because he sublimated who he was for some idea of preserving his place in society, his legacy?

He complains towards the end that the world honoured TS Eliot but not him, that his star might have shone bright, but briefly.

I will point out that my copy of Seven Centuries of Poetry in English had the poem from his contemporary and dear friend Wilfred Owen – but it doesn’t have any poems from Siegfried Sassoon.

It is hard to feel any kindness towards the man he becomes – there’s plenty of sympathy for the younger one, before bitterness completely drowns him. I went into this knowing it would be a sad, sorry tale, but for most of its running time I was entranced by the dialogue, and the way this tragedy comes together.

Like everything Terence Davies does, it’s slow, artful, pretentious, beautifully put together, and completely uninterested as to whether any audience for it exists or whether anyone else can relate to it other than himself.

I really admire him for that.

8 times this flick represents the tragedy of a man who hopes life will be kind to him if he gives up who he is, only to realise way too late that the world doesn’t care out of 10

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“Friends may come, friends may go. Enemies are always faithful.” - Benediction