Benediction (2021)
Country: GB/US
Technical: col/2.35:1 137m
Director: Terence Davies
Cast: Jack Lowden, Simon Russell Beale, Kate Phillips, Peter Capaldi, Jeremy Irvine
Synopsis:
His attempt to bring the establishment to book for its mismanagement of the war undermined by his friends, Siegfried Sassoon finds himself marginalised in a Scottish institution and thereafter deprived of the recognition he deserves as a poet. Looking back in bitterness over his homosexual love affairs and marriage of convenience, he turns in old age to Catholicism to bring something immutable back to his life.
Review:
Eschewing the conventions of biopic and opting instead for an 'exhibit' style presentation (recitations of the poems, back projections of actuality footage), Davies draws typically sensitive performances from his actors, until the film gets bogged down in the Ivor Novello/Sebastian Flyte caricatures of queendom. Which is a pity because it takes attention away from the work and the legacy onto what no doubt drew the director to the subject in the first place. The closing playout of V-W's Tallis Fantasia over a haunted, grief-stricken, out-of-context Sassoon is a gambit that does not quite pay off, reminding us of how long we have spent with him and to what limited effect.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col/2.35:1 137m
Director: Terence Davies
Cast: Jack Lowden, Simon Russell Beale, Kate Phillips, Peter Capaldi, Jeremy Irvine
Synopsis:
His attempt to bring the establishment to book for its mismanagement of the war undermined by his friends, Siegfried Sassoon finds himself marginalised in a Scottish institution and thereafter deprived of the recognition he deserves as a poet. Looking back in bitterness over his homosexual love affairs and marriage of convenience, he turns in old age to Catholicism to bring something immutable back to his life.
Review:
Eschewing the conventions of biopic and opting instead for an 'exhibit' style presentation (recitations of the poems, back projections of actuality footage), Davies draws typically sensitive performances from his actors, until the film gets bogged down in the Ivor Novello/Sebastian Flyte caricatures of queendom. Which is a pity because it takes attention away from the work and the legacy onto what no doubt drew the director to the subject in the first place. The closing playout of V-W's Tallis Fantasia over a haunted, grief-stricken, out-of-context Sassoon is a gambit that does not quite pay off, reminding us of how long we have spent with him and to what limited effect.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col/2.35:1 137m
Director: Terence Davies
Cast: Jack Lowden, Simon Russell Beale, Kate Phillips, Peter Capaldi, Jeremy Irvine
Synopsis:
His attempt to bring the establishment to book for its mismanagement of the war undermined by his friends, Siegfried Sassoon finds himself marginalised in a Scottish institution and thereafter deprived of the recognition he deserves as a poet. Looking back in bitterness over his homosexual love affairs and marriage of convenience, he turns in old age to Catholicism to bring something immutable back to his life.
Review:
Eschewing the conventions of biopic and opting instead for an 'exhibit' style presentation (recitations of the poems, back projections of actuality footage), Davies draws typically sensitive performances from his actors, until the film gets bogged down in the Ivor Novello/Sebastian Flyte caricatures of queendom. Which is a pity because it takes attention away from the work and the legacy onto what no doubt drew the director to the subject in the first place. The closing playout of V-W's Tallis Fantasia over a haunted, grief-stricken, out-of-context Sassoon is a gambit that does not quite pay off, reminding us of how long we have spent with him and to what limited effect.