Benediction


Director	Terence Davies
Selected Cast	Tom Blyth as Glen Byam Shaw
	Jack Lowden as Young Siegfried Sassoon
	Peter Capaldi as Siegfried Sassoon
	Kate Phillips as Young Hester Gatty

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Comments and Reviews


zabadak 4th Oct 2022		BFI London Film Festival 2021 review :happy: In his first film about an openly gay man, Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives) casts Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi to play poet Sassoon as a young man and in later life. Convalescing in a veterans’ hospital, and conveniently out of the public eye after publishing work that was sharply critical of the military decision-makers, Sasoon meets Wilfred Owen, a tender first relationship (if more of mind than body). Employing a signature collage-style narrative that intercuts dramatic scenes with more expressive sequences, Davies counterpoints key moments in Sassoon’s life – his relationships with Ivor Novello and the aristocrat Stephen Tennant, as well as his later marriage to a woman – with beautiful readings of his poetry over montages of real images of soldiers in wartime. Featuring a wonderfully understated performance from Lowden, it’s a moving tribute to Sassoon, who grew to old age with bitter regret, having been unable to love and desire freely. It is also an elegant, mournful work that reflects on British queer histories. Tricia Tuttle

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