Benediction (Terence Davies, 2021)

For CINEMA SCOPE's 2021 TIFF Coverage:

Terence Davies’ latest film focuses on World War I and its aftermath, a period that has been his cinematic lodestar since his early short films. Benediction meticulously recreates the complex world of its subject, anti-war poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden as a young man, Peter Capaldi later in life). But the film does much more than this. It articulates a vision of authoritarianism, one that suggests it is a mindset more threatened by minor deviation than outright rebellion. Sassoon, a lieutenant in the British Army, faced court martial not because he refused to fight (he was decorated for valour), but because he believed that the war was being prolonged for political gain, by generals who had never experienced trench warfare.

He is committed for the “nervous illness” of stepping out of line. After beginning a relationship with fellow sanitarium patient, poet Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson), Sassoon recognizes that his homosexuality is another minor transgression. He is a soldier, a patriot, and committed to the social fabric. But loving men makes him an outsider in modern life. This is something we take for granted in historical representations, but Davies, for one of the first times in his career, emphasizes the normalcy of gayness, suggesting that it is the ultimate triviality of desiring one sex and not another that provokes authoritarian hatred.

Following from this approach, Benediction represents a new frankness in Davies’ depiction of gay desire. This, combined with a series of anti-realistic formal choices, almost suggests that Davies has taken inspiration from his late countryman Derek Jarman. Through its extensive use of found footage from the war, as well as back-projections, unstable diegesis, and other experimental techniques, Davies explores the shattered souls of the men who were sent to execute the Great War.

Sassoon discovers that he is not alone, but is forced to the margins of society. Throughout his life, Sassoon meets other men such as himself, who ache for “the love that dare not speak its name.” This includes a kindly military psychologist (Ben Daniels) and later, a group of creative luminaries that includes legendary songwriter Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) Sassoon’s eventual decision to marry a kind woman (Kate Williams), for companionship as well as legitimacy, is seen by Davies as a necessary compromise, one that does not provoke misery, but merely places true happiness just beyond his grasp. In Benediction, the difference between obedience and defiance is razor thin. And as Davies demonstrates through the frequent use of Sassoon’s mournful verse, warmongering and homophobia are simply two faces of the same culture of death.