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“Benediction,” Reviewed: The Bio-Pic as Radical Melodrama

By Richard Brody

The modern cinema is, in large part, a tale of three Ter(r)ences. Terrence Malick, Terence Davies , and Terence Nance are all crucial innovators of film form, and their innovations all reimagine the same building block of movies: the very nature of a character. Malick’s response is metaphysical, Nance’s is interpersonal, and Davies’s is the most radical of all: it’s cultural. Davies’s new film, “Benediction,” which opens Friday, is an inside-out bio-pic of the British poet Siegfried Sassoon; it follows many of the familiar contours of the genre, but, above all, it renders the poet’s inner life by way of his aesthetic touchstones and cultural references. Sassoon’s art was transfigured and his public image forged by the First World War, and the movie brings his experiences of history to life with a documentary-like implant of artifacts. The result is a grand-scale melodrama that embodies its protagonist’s artistic power and intimate passion along with the devastating experience of war and the oppressions of what passed for normalcy in law and mores.

Sassoon lived from 1886 to 1967, and was already a writer of note by the time that the First World War began. The story in “Benediction” begins in 1914 and ends in the nineteen-sixties, and its framework is chronological, though the movie is filled with audacious leaps in time, both ahead and back. Throughout the movie, the war is an open wound in Sassoon’s mind, and, as he advances in age and the world moves on, the wound torments him ever more. Davies crafts simple and startling effects to conjure the relentless presence of Sassoon’s traumatic memories in the course of his daily life and amid its intimate dramas and creative furies. From the very start, Davies displays both the originality of his methods and their overarching design. At a London theatre that’s presenting the Diaghilev ballet set to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” Sassoon’s poem about that performance, “Concert-Interpretation,” is heard in voice-over on the soundtrack as the stage curtain rises, and the image yields not a performance of ballet but black-and-white archival footage showing—as the poem relates—the preparations for war.

The story of Sassoon’s life is sufficiently dramatic that the mere description of its main events plays like a movie. A gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, Sassoon (played, as a young man, by Jack Lowden) was a part of what one lover calls “the shadow life,” a glittering underground of sophisticates and socialites whose eminence and glamour are menaced by the persecutions of power. The potential devastation of these threats is suggested by the very presence of Sassoon’s close friend Robbie Ross (Simon Russell Beale), who, as Sassoon reminds a mutual acquaintance, took great risks to defend Oscar Wilde (who was imprisoned for his sexuality) and to preserve his literary legacy. Robbie also defends Sassoon, who was a courageous officer in the war, decorated for his bravery, but who refuses to return to the front on political grounds, thereby risking court-martial and execution. Robbie manages to get Sassoon declared ill; in a military hospital in Scotland, Sassoon meets a younger poet, Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson), whom he considers the greater artist. Their intense romance ends when Owen is returned to duty and dies in combat a week before the end of the war.

After the war, Sassoon enters the London beau monde and begins a turbulent romantic relationship with the musical-theatre composer and actor Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine); he has another with the aristocratic Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch), and, despairing of the febrile solitude of these brittle romances, marries a woman named Hester Gatty (played, as a young woman, by Kate Phillips) in the hope of finding stability and serenity. Instead, Sassoon (played, as an older man, by Peter Capaldi) grows increasingly tormented, embittered, and wrathful, treating the loving attentions of Hester (played, as an older woman, by Gemma Jones) and their son, George (Richard Goulding), with cruel and high-handed contempt. He seeks solace through conversion to Catholicism, but religious devotion offers little comfort. Davies doesn’t follow all of the byways and epicycles of Sassoon’s life; rather, he shears them down, tweaks dates venially in the interest of concentrating and focussing the film’s dramatic intensity and its psychological clarity.

In his first, largely autobiographical features, “ Distant Voices, Still Lives ” and “ The Long Day Closes ,” Davies attests to the formative influence of Hollywood movies—and Hollywood musicals—on his aesthetic sensibility. (Davies was born in Liverpool in 1945.) The adamant modernism of those two features is imbued with the spirit of the movies that he grew up with, but it hardly reflects their manner or style. It wasn’t until Davies made a movie in the United States—“ The Neon Bible ,” from 1995—that he began something like his psychological conquest of Hollywood, his personalized variation on the kinds of movies that had shaped his sensibility. In 2000, he unleashed “ The House of Mirth ,” an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel that is far closer in style and mood, in inner music, to Wharton’s writing than is Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence.” (The commercial failure of Davies’s film kept him from making a dramatic feature for a decade.) Davies’s 2016 bio-pic of Emily Dickinson, “ A Quiet Passion ,” is, in effect, a screwball tragedy, its whirling domesticities perched at the edge of the abyss. In “Benediction,” Davies turns Sassoon’s life into a self-conscious Hollywood melodrama, a grand historical tale that makes its very historicity its subject—and a story of memory that reflects history in an original form.

Befitting a movie about a great writer, “Benediction” is a film of copious and brilliant dialogue. The talk is often confrontational and lacerating—Sassoon, even in his youth and even in the face of formidable authority, is depicted as contentious and acerbic. The spell of pugnacity is broken only in scenes of rare mutual understanding, and the characters’ intimacy and dignity are all the more precious for the risk of self-exposure and vulnerability that they face. Yet Davies goes beyond the text to give it a distinctive cinematic identity; he devises a style that seemingly inscribes his characters’ sharp-pointed discourse onto the screen. That method is daring in its simplicity, even its recessiveness—the use of taut and still frames, held at length, that give the actors enough space to transmit their language through their postures and gestures as well as through their vocal inflections, and that, in their very stillness, seem to hold the words up for display and scrutiny like the borders of a printed page.

The cinematography, by Nicola Daley (remember her work and her name in awards season), also offers scenes of tightrope tension by way of an agile and graceful camera that uses the frame to trace the movement of time (a method reminiscent of that of another great cinematic artist of memory, Max Ophüls ). Several of the sequences set in the military hospital offer camera moves that are as limpid and thrilling as a dance. One scene, which culminates in the parting of Sassoon and Owen, condenses a torrent of emotion into a figure of style so exquisite and reserved that it plays like cinematic literature itself. That reserve isn’t monolithic: the characters joke and jibe, strut and dance throughout the film, and they also erupt with rage in moments of anger that are all the more disturbing for their suddenness and their unfettered ferocity. And Sassoon witnesses extremes of agony in the hospital that Davies depicts with a shocking candor.

As for the poetry that’s at the center of the movie—both Sassoon’s and Owen’s—it’s a virtual character in itself, and it’s largely inseparable from the memories of the war that the poems enshrine. Much of it is paired with archival documentary clips of the war, of the marshalling of troops, of recruitment on the home front—and of devastation, of corpses rotting on the battlefield, of grievously wounded soldiers recuperating in benumbed stillness. Davies treats these images like cultural artifacts at the same level and of the same sort as the poems that give the movie its emotional core. The documentary element extends further, to the music that fills the soundtrack, whether Novello’s or that of other popular singers; a 78-r.p.m. record of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Love Is Here to Stay” accompanies a scene of great emotional import. In an astounding touch, Davies makes dramatic use here of the peculiarities of that era’s records and players. Joining the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams to a poem of Owen’s, he turns the movie into a virtual opera.

There’s something breathtakingly comprehensive about Davies’s achievement in “Benediction.” Its very time frame, reaching from his family’s prehistory to his maturity, suggests his effort to compose something like his own personal British history. The cultural life of music and literature are his own heritage as well. As a gay man who has spoken of his unease at being gay, as a lapsed Catholic whose religion was a “scar” on his life, Davies seems to speak with Sassoon in an offscreen dialogue of recognition and sympathy. “Benediction” is an expansive movie of loss, isolation, and horror; it’s an energizing and inspiring movie about the vanity of existence itself. The physical design of the film—its décor, its costumes, its settings—coalesces with the actors’ diction and gestures, as well as with the historical characters in Sassoon’s circle who populate the action, and with the memory of love and the exaltation of art. The film brings the past to life with a vividness and an immediacy that seem wrenched from Davies’s very soul.

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“Benediction” bears the distinctive stamp of its writer/director, Terence Davies , a man whose films feel more like poetic meditations on moods, emotions, and events than straightforward narratives. It’s as if we are floating above the material, touching down in different places at the filmmaker’s discretion. Having a poet for a subject only heightens that feeling; the images are supplemented by the verse of Siegfried Sassoon, read by the two actors who play him, Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi . Davies hops between Lowden’s past and Capaldi’s current timeframes, visually morphing the younger actor into the older one on occasion. There are also musical numbers sprinkled throughout, as well as war footage from World War I, the conflict the real life Sassoon objected to in 1917 after spending time on the front line.

Sassoon’s Soldier’s Declaration is read early in the film. His refusal to return to the front should have resulted in his court-martial, where his objections would have been read into the trial record by law. Instead, due to his family’s friends in high places, Sassoon is sent against his will to a mental hospital to cure his “breakdown.” The poet attends therapy sessions with Dr. Rivers ( Ben Daniels ), where he reveals his desire for “the love that dare not speak its name.” Surprisingly, the doctor reveals not only his own homosexuality but a penchant for poetic explanations. “Why must you make bad things sound so beautiful?” Sassoon asks after one of Davies’ most poignant pieces of dialogue.

Sassoon also meets fellow poet Wilfred Owen ( Matthew Tennyson ), who edits the hospital literary magazine. Owen is shy, has a slight stammer and wants to impress his new friend with his poems. Sassoon is at first critical, until Owen presents him with a work that’s so good it breaks his heart. As part of their therapy, the duo practice ballroom dancing, which Davies shoots with a tender, erotic gaze. (A scene in a swimming pool also merits this gaze.) Romantic implication is all the viewer gets here, though the feelings are so palpable they’re almost tactile. The quick, furtive glances and awkward silences are beautifully rendered, leading us to correctly believe this will not end well.

Owen is cleared to return to the front, where he is killed in battle. The scene where he says goodbye to Sassoon is a master class in the understated, often unspoken emotions that are Davies’ specialty. Tennyson and Lowden are fantastic, with the latter pleading “can you please stay a little longer” despite knowing it’s not possible. This relationship and its outcome will haunt the movie; Owen is yet another of the men Sassoon could not save in battle, highlighting the main reason he originally objected to returning to the front. He will honor them with his poetry. Davies’ use of black and white newsreel footage under Sassoon’s words powerfully illustrates this.

The elder Sassoon is a bitter man who yells at his son, George ( Richard Goulding ) and has a tenuous relationship with his wife Hester Gatty ( Gemma Jones ). George is stunned that his previously non-religious father has decided to join the Catholic Church. “It’s something permanent,” he tells George. Capaldi doesn’t really look like Lowden, nor does he appear to match his mannerisms, but that would be more relevant if the film were presented in order. When Lowden visually morphs into the older actor (a technique Davies uses for Hester and a few other characters), we take on faith that the two are the same. What’s more important is that we believe that Sassoon could somehow grow into this hardened, angry man who’s still looking for answers. “Benediction” gives us enough information to support this.

Sassoon embarks on numerous affairs with men, many of whom treat him poorly. First, there’s Ivor Novello (a fiery Jeremy Irvine ), a musical theater legend and star of Alfred Hitchcock ’s 1927 Jack the Ripper film " The Lodger ." “He’s amusing but unpleasant,” Sassoon’s mother tells him after meeting Novello. “His eyes are cruel.” Maybe Hitch saw that same cruelty when he cast him. Novello gets the film’s one standard love scene, which is briefly interrupted by Glen Byam Shaw ( Tom Blyth ), his former lover and one of Sassoon’s later partners. Despite seeing Novello coldly dismiss Shaw, Sassoon still pines for him and accepts some of his abuse. It’s as if he feels he deserves it.

Calam Lynch plays the tubercular Stephen Tennant, another of Sassoon’s lovers who taunts him throughout their relationship. Davies scripts some hilariously catty banter that he uses to set the viewer up for the devastating punches he’ll throw later. As a result, the laughs wind up getting stuck in one’s throat. Sassoon is also a very jealous type, dealing with men who have no intentions of being faithful. When Lynch morphs into older actor Anton Lesser , we know he’ll show up in Capaldi and James’ timeline. Only Shaw and Hester Gatty’s younger incarnation ( Kate Phillips ) treat Sassoon with any decency. Gatty seems to be as masochistic as her soon to be husband; she’s aware of his sexuality (both he and Stephen fill her in), but she enters into a potentially unhappy marriage anyway and bears him a son.

Including his masterpiece, “The Long Day Closes,” Terence Davies has made deeply personal, sometimes autobiographical films. I suspect he finds some kinship with Sassoon, a fellow artist who, at least in this film, is ultimately an older man still figuring out if his art ever mattered. A man still questioning the choices he made in life. This is one of Davies’ best films, as equally detached as his earlier work yet brimming with emotions that are a little closer to the surface than we expect from him. It’s interesting that he named this film “Benediction.” Webster’s describes a benediction as a Catholic sacrament, but also as the last prayer of a religious service. The last poem we hear is the one Owen wrote for Sassoon, presented over the haunting visual accompaniment of an injured soldier. It serves as a perfect encapsulation of Sassoon’s work and his survivor’s guilt. For him, this is a final moment of grace, a closing prayer.

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Film credits.

Benediction (2022)

Rated PG-13 for disturbing war images, some sexual material and thematic elements.

137 minutes

Jack Lowden as Siegfried Sassoon

Peter Capaldi as Siegfried Sassoon (Older)

Simon Russell Beale as Robbie Ross

Jeremy Irvine as Ivor Novello

Calam Lynch as Stephen Tennant

Tom Blyth as Glen Byam Shaw

Kate Phillips as Hester Gatty

Geraldine James as Theresa Thornycroft

• Terence Davies

Cinematographer

• Nicola Daley
• Alex Mackie

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Benediction

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Rent Benediction on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

It isn't an easy watch, but Benediction uncovers a profoundly affecting drama in the real-life story of a combat veteran whose poetry warned against the horrors of war.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Terence Davies

Jack Lowden

Young Siegfried Sassoon

Peter Capaldi

Siegfried Sassoon

Simon Russell Beale

Robbie Ross

Jeremy Irvine

Ivor Novello

Calam Lynch

Stephen Tennant

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Review: ‘Benediction’ is a shattering biopic of the English war poet Siegfried Sassoon

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“Benediction,” Terence Davies’ achingly beautiful portrait of the English war poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon, is a movie of acute sadness and intense pleasure. The pleasure and the sadness are inextricable, which seems fitting, given how closely aesthetic bliss and moral despair were entwined in Sassoon’s own art. In furious, somber and, yes, frequently thrilling language, he laid bare the horrors of World War I and excoriated the moral blindness of its architects and supporters. His poem “Suicide in the Trenches,” first published in 1918, ends with this stinging rebuke:

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

A decorated veteran of the Western Front before he turned conscientious objector, Sassoon knew of what he spoke. Sprinkling passages of his poetry over somber reams of old war footage, “Benediction” is, among other things, a mournful tribute to the wounded and fallen, suffused with a particular compassion for those survivors who, like Sassoon, never shook off the trauma of what they experienced. Few filmmakers have Davies’ gift for evoking states of loneliness, and here he suggests the terrible isolation visited upon those who endured the horrors of armed conflict.

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But “Benediction,” venturing well beyond the war years that fired Sassoon’s own poetic imagination, is about more than one kind of isolation. As a portrait of a gay man living in early 20th century Britain, it could scarcely be otherwise. And in the Scottish actor Jack Lowden ( “Dunkirk,” “Fighting With My Family” ), Sassoon has found a most eloquent and empathetic interpreter. Through Lowden’s thoughtful, tender, quietly charismatic and finally anguished performance, we come to grasp not only Sassoon’s struggles with his sexuality, his art and his destiny, but also the unpredictable evolution of those struggles over time. Drifting between past and future, history and memory, “Benediction” captures the strange, specific alchemy by which contradictory fragments of identity assemble themselves into a soul.

It goes without saying that Davies’ insistence on this kind of emotional interiority — and his accompanying disinterest in expository montages and wildly gestural, prosthetic-laden performances — run counter to the strategies and priorities of the average mainstream biopic. (That much was already clear from “A Quiet Passion,” his splendid 2017 portrait of another great poet, Emily Dickinson.) And his formal approach — in particular the fluid, languid rhythms of Alex Mackie’s editing; the stately, almost symmetrical widescreen images composed by the cinematographer Nicola Daley; and a soundtrack that samples Stravinsky, the Gershwins and other music-hall staples of the era — would be hard to mistake for that of any other filmmaker.

But the singularity of “Benediction” arises from more than just a spirited rejection of Hollywood convention. What has united most of Davies’ dramas (excluding his masterful early memoirs, “Distant Voices, Still Lives” and “The Long Day Closes” ) is a deep if understated identification with his protagonists, an ability to perceive — in the tragic destinies of women like Lily Bart in “The House of Mirth” and Hester Collyer in “The Deep Blue Sea” — a shared alienation from the prevailing codes and mores of one’s era. To call “Benediction” a deeply personal film might thus seem unremarkable, since Davies seldom deals in the impersonal. But even by his standards, the story of a fellow gay English artist, even one locked away in an earlier era, touches resonant insights and unusual depths of feeling.

And that feeling, more often than not, is one of bitter failure and futility. We see the young Siegfried’s forceful determination when he denounces “a war of aggression and conquest” that has needlessly claimed the lives of millions, including his younger brother, Hamo (Thom Ashley). But his defiant protest has little effect; rather than being court-martialed, Siegfried is declared mentally ill and sent to a Scottish military hospital. There, he meets a sympathetic therapist, Dr. Rivers (Ben Daniels), and a fellow convalescing war poet, the great Wilfred Owen (a sweet Matthew Tennyson), the object of an unconsummated first love that dares not even whisper its name. But despite the emotional and artistic bond that forms between the two men, Owen returns to battle and is killed in action — a tragedy that, for Siegfried, sets the pattern for a lifetime’s worth of thwarted longings.

Those longings are occasionally sated by the many handsome, well-spoken young men who move within Siegfried’s artistic circle. (They also inspire some commiseration with older mentors like the journalist Robbie Ross, a friend of Oscar Wilde’s played here by the excellent Simon Russell Beale.) One of the achievements of “Benediction,” as it drifts from Siegfried’s quiet family home in Kent (Geraldine James plays his warmly supportive mother) to the bustling theaters, restaurants and house parties of London, is to illuminate the pockets of privilege enjoyed by wealthy, culturally influential gay men in an otherwise repressive and inhospitable era. But the pleasures of such privilege — the companionship of friends, the expression of long-forbidden desires — also come with a corrosive aftertaste of confusion, betrayal and heartache.

Much of that heartache is dispensed by the popular musician Ivor Novello (a smoldering, viperous Jeremy Irvine), who sings his witty ditties at the piano and dispenses little nuggets of verbal poison everywhere else. Ivor treats the besotted “Siggy” as callously as he does his many other lovers; they include the theater actor and director Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth), in whom Siegfried briefly discovers a kindred spirit, similarly well acquainted with what Shaw calls “the inconveniences of this shadow-life we lead.” But our hero’s great love from this period is Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch), a narcissistic socialite who winds up leaving him most heartbroken of all.

Davies’ gift for caustic witticisms is at its full strength in these scenes, in which Siegfried, for all his own lingual flair, is often overmatched by his paramours for sheer drawing-room-comedy vitriol. In time, exhausted and devastated, he will seek comfort in Catholicism and also embrace the stability and social respectability of marriage, to the poet and artist Hester Gatty (a fine Kate Phillips). This compromise is shown to exact a brutal toll in somber bookending scenes set near the end of Sassoon’s life. (An acerbic Peter Capaldi plays the older, disillusioned Siegfried; Gemma Jones is quietly touching as the long-suffering Hester, while Richard Goulding plays their grown son, George.)

The sense of waste and futility that haunts these later scenes is crushing, not least because it seems to hint at regrets and resentments that lie beyond the reach of the movie’s subject. It’s hard to watch the elderly Siegfried, seething with contempt and self-defeat and railing against rock ’n’ roll music, and not be reminded of Davies’ own well-documented ambivalence about his homosexuality, his Catholicism and the ever-shifting tides of popular culture.

But if “Benediction” is itself a declaration of outsiderhood, one that stands poignantly apart from cinema’s more affirming narratives of queer awakening, Davies rarely allows this subtext to overpower the specificities of his subject. Nor does he lose sight of the larger tragedy that so irrevocably shaped Sassoon’s life and art. The final moments, set to a staggering recitation of Owen’s poem “Disabled,” are particularly devastating in the way that they bring home Sassoon’s haunting memories of love and war — and his firsthand knowledge of the destructive power of both.

‘Benediction’

Rated: PG-13, for disturbing war images, some sexual material and thematic elements Running time: 2 hours, 17 minutes Playing: Starts June 3 in limited release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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Benediction review – artful Siegfried Sassoon biopic full of unresolved yearning

The war poet’s life provides rich material for director Terence Davies to explore his preoccupations with sexuality, religion and the search for redemption

T erence Davies, the writer-director behind such modern classics as Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes and more recently Sunset Song , has long been one of the great poets of British cinema. It’s perhaps unsurprising therefore that his films have occasionally focused on the lives of poets: Emily Dickinson in 2016’s A Quiet Passion , and now Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction . Davies’s portrait of Dickinson was a heartfelt paean to a creative talent who went largely unrecognised in her own lifetime. His account of Sassoon’s tribulations (an inventively nonlinear collage of drama, poetry, music and archive) is more unforgiving, confronting us with a contradictory character locked in his own private hell – keenly attuned to the horrors of war, yet seemingly unable to change either himself or the world around him, whether through art or action.

Jack Lowden is perfectly cast as the younger Sassoon, a war hero who received a Military Cross in July 1916 for “conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy’s trenches” on the western front. Yet Sassoon’s near-suicidal bravery (his comrades reportedly called him “Mad Jack”) covered a growing revulsion for the so-called Great War, boldly expressed in A Soldier’s Declaration (published in the press and read in the House of Commons) in which he accused his superiors of turning “a war of defence and liberation” into one of “aggression and conquest”.

Sassoon called his anti-war protest “an act of wilful defiance of military authority”, knowing that it could lead to a court martial. Instead, thanks to privilege and connection, he was diagnosed with neurasthenia and sent to Craiglockhart war hospital near Edinburgh, where he met and mentored the younger and arguably more talented Wilfred Owen, whose poem Disabled is deployed to devastating effect in Benediction . In Davies’s hands, the comparatively fleeting relationship between Sassoon and Owen (affectingly played by Matthew Tennyson) becomes a turning point for both – the latter discovering a voice that would become increasingly celebrated after his death in 1918, while the former is left in a seemingly unending cycle of grief, disappointment and loss, even when surrounded by high-society glitz and glamour.

Davies’s films have always had a deeply personal edge, from the autobiographically inspired narratives of his early trilogy ( Children; Madonna and Child; Death and Transfiguration ) to his brilliantly singular vision of his home town, Liverpool, in Of Time and the City . Yet in Sassoon’s story, Davies finds a narrative that cuts right to the heart of several of his personal preoccupations. From the poet’s inner struggles with his sexuality (this is Davies’s most overtly “out” film – sensuous, with occasional hints of bawdiness) to his late-in-the-day conversion to Catholicism (the director turned his back on the church at a formative point), Sassoon’s life offers a wealth of opportunities for Davies to turn his attentions inward, or to project his own experiences on to his subject. No wonder Lowden (who is mesmerising in the lead role) told me in a BFI interview that, having immersed himself in Sassoon’s diaries in preparation for Benediction , he came to realise during filming that he was effectively playing his director.

There are moments of witheringly witty cattiness, too, as the postwar years find Sassoon in the brightly brittle company of Ivor Novello (a droll Jeremy Irvine) and preeningly snarky socialite Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch, segueing into Anton Lesser), caustic friends and caddish lovers who merely amplify the emptiness that increasingly engulfs Sassoon. By contrast, Kate Phillips and Gemma Jones jointly offer sympathetic portraits of Hester Gatty, marriage to whom provides him with yet another futile search for redemption. In his later years, Sassoon is played by Peter Capaldi, whose face tellingly seems set in a mask of embittered despondency, bordering upon horror.

Behind it all is an endlessly saddening search for that transformative sacrament evoked by the film’s title – alluring yet elusive. It’s a theme to which Davies has returned throughout his dazzling filmography, from his early shorts to this surprisingly accessible feature; a sense of unfulfilled longing that not even his many moments of cinematic transcendence can lay to rest.

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Terence Davies’s Benediction Is an Anti-Biopic

Terence Davies’s Benediction is one of the most restless films of recent years, though you might not notice it at first glance, what with the director’s precise compositions, his deliberate pacing, and the (mostly) restrained performances he coaxes out of his cast. The film follows the life of the British poet Siegfried Sassoon, whose harrowing experiences during WWI led to some of the most beautiful words ever written in the English language as well as a lifelong struggle to connect with others. But to call Benediction a biopic would be giving biopics a bit too much credit. They don’t deserve Benediction .

It would perhaps have been easy to depict Sassoon’s psychological and emotional turmoil directly, through dialogue and lots of anguished wailing. But then this wouldn’t be a Terence Davies film. He is one of the most expressive of directors, but he’s always scratching away at something seemingly inexpressible. Early on in Benediction , we see young Siegfried (Jack Lowden) attend a 1914 performance of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and the curtain of the theater rises to reveal a special effect: silent-movie footage of idyllic British scenes, which then gives way to newsreel images of young men signing up for military service, as we hear Sassoon’s poetry in voiceover. We sense the sadness and the gathering doom, of course, but there’s something more here — something in the way the film juxtaposes Stravinsky’s ballet, which after all threw down the gauntlet of modernism, and the then-relatively young medium of cinema alongside Sassoon’s poetry to suggest that the writer’s eventual feelings of loss, meaninglessness, and inadequacy were generational, historic, maybe even metaphysical.

Benediction features many such collage-like moments. Sometimes they convey complicated ideas, sometimes they convey absurdly simple ones. At one point, Davies intercuts images of soldiers on the frontlines with black-and-white images of a herd of cattle thundering over a field. It’s the bluntest, most basic of metaphors, but the director finds uncommon grace in it. The images possess rhythm and beauty, and the Western tune on the soundtrack has a lilting grandeur. There isn’t a lazy note in the film.

Much of Benediction follows Sassoon’s passionate love affairs with men, most notably the famous actor and singer Ivor Novello (played by Jeremy Irvine, who looks like he was carved out of marble) and the nobleman Stephen Tennant (played by Calam Lynch, who looks like he was carved out of porcelain). There’s an emotional imbalance to the relationships: Siegfried falls hard for these men, who seem to drift easily and confidently through a world of endless vanity and constant couplings. But their world is, by necessity, sparse, chilly, and almost always interior; this is, after all, still an England where homosexuality is illegal.

Maybe that’s why Benediction , for all its great beauty, feels so stripped-down, so purposefully austere. Save for one devastating moment near the end, Davies rarely moves in for close-ups. He likes to keep his camera fixed at a slight distance, presenting his characters in their environments. But he’s not looking for realism or extraneous detail. The actors often stand still, and deliver their lines with submerged tension. For all their sexual back-and-forth, we sense that these people exist in a reality that would completely collapse with one wrong move.

Or maybe it has already collapsed. A pall of sadness and regret hangs over everything, as it must have for Sassoon himself. Even when the war isn’t mentioned, it always seems to be there. It’s there in his constant longing for companionship, and it’s there in the way that the handsome young Lowden’s face occasionally transforms into the brittle, bitter visage of Peter Capaldi, who plays the older Sassoon, a man stuck in a mostly loveless marriage and who has converted to Catholicism late in life in an effort to commune with something greater than himself.

That searching, that lostness and melancholy, clearly reaches beyond one famous poet. Sassoon’s loneliness could stand in for the immense loneliness of all the generations caught in the endless shockwave of the old world’s blowing its brains out in World War I. But his loneliness, like many others’, was also compounded by a society that refused to accept him as he was. “Why do you hate the modern world so much?” Sassoon’s son asks him at one point, late in life. “Because it’s younger than I am,” the poet responds. It’s a good line — a funny line. But it’s also profoundly sad, because, as Benediction shows, these are the words of a man who never had a world to call his own.

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Terence davies’ ‘benediction’: film review | tiff 2021.

Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi play World War I English poet Siegfried Sassoon in his younger years and his ruminative old age, respectively, in this melancholy bio-drama.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Six years after taking a contemplative approach to the life of Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion , Terence Davies undertakes a thoughtful study of another poet, Siegfried Sassoon, in Benediction . The English writer emerges here as an introspective figure — a decorated World War I soldier haunted by the deaths he witnessed on the Western Front and a gay man disillusioned by his relationships with jaded narcissists. This biographical drama, grounded in the anguished poetry of its protagonist, is hushed and decorous to a fault. But it does eventually wind its way to a profoundly affecting conclusion.

That ending, which for many will invite comparison to Call Me by Your Name , is like a release valve for Jack Lowden’s muted but achingly sensitive performance as the young Sassoon. Raw feeling suddenly floods from him with a force that recalibrates our understanding of his love for Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson), who entered his life only fleetingly, and whose legacy as a First World War poet would equal or arguably eclipse Sassoon’s. Davies’ use in that concluding scene of a stunning piece by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a British symphonist from the same period, retroactively elevates the film with an emotional vitality that’s otherwise often missing.

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Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations) Release date : Friday, June 3 Cast: Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeremy Irvine, Calam Lynch, Kate Phillips, Geraldine James, Anton Lesser, Gemma Jones, Ben Daniels, Matthew Tennyson Director-screenwriter: Terence Davies

The life that courses through the writer-director’s best films has been dimmed in his more recent work. I’m no doubt in the minority here given that Davies has retained a reverent critical following, but while he continues to be an impeccable craftsman, his last film to really floor me was the underappreciated 2011 adaptation of the Terence Rattigan play The Deep Blue Sea .

Perhaps that’s partly because Davies set the bar so high for himself with the unique films that put him on the map starting in the late ’80s — two exquisitely personal family dramas set in his native Liverpool, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes ; the wonderful documentary about his hometown, Of Time and the City ; and one of the finest film adaptations of Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth . But his films lately have become more cerebral and stilted. That’s the case with Benediction , which will make it an acquired taste, particularly outside the U.K.

Queer subtext has rippled through the openly gay Davies’ filmography, but his look at Sassoon’s melancholic series of relationships after the war makes this his first explicit exploration of love between men.

Chief among Sassoon’s partners portrayed here are London theater luminary Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine), described by Siegfried’s mother (Geraldine James) as “amusing but unpleasant,” with cruel eyes; and bright young thing Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch). Both of them pack more than enough acid-dipped snark to send Siegfried, if not back into the closet, then into the retreat of a passionless heterosexual marriage, like many gay men of the era. “You must redeem my life for me,” he tells future wife Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips), making no secret of his sexuality.

A whirl of famous names moves through his orbit — Ottoline Morrell (Suzanne Bertish) and Edith Sitwell (Lia Williams) make brief, highly theatrical appearances — but it’s the experiences of the Great War that linger with Sassoon. And his choice to capitulate to the safety of marriage, transitioning into “the shadow life,” steers him toward an old age poisoned by sorrow and regret. ( Peter Capaldi steps into those scenes as Sassoon, with Gemma Jones as the older Hester.)

Davies opens with Siegfried and his younger brother Hamo (Thom Ashley) attending a 1914 performance of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes dancing Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” a last gasp of beauty before the siblings ship off to war. Only one would return. The director takes a lyrical collage approach, interweaving grainy black-and-white archival footage of soldiers in battle with Sassoon’s poems read in voiceover by Lowden. These are not poems of heroism and valor but of desolation, trench fever rendered as abject horror.

Withdrawing from service, Siegfried sends a “Soldier’s Declaration” to his commanding officer in 1917, a broadside against the British government’s continuation of the war and of the senseless sacrifice of human lives. His friend Robbie Ross (Simon Russell Beale), a former lover of Oscar Wilde’s, uses his influence to intervene, against Siegfried’s wishes, and spare him from court-martial. Instead he’s brought before a committee and advised to “ignore his conscience,” but he refuses to be silenced. In order to neutralize his protest, Sassoon is deemed unfit for service and sent to a military psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh.

This section contains some of the more illuminating scenes. Siegfried receives a frosty welcome from Julian Sands’ sneering chief medical officer, but counseling sessions with Ben Daniels’ Dr. Rivers provide “a cleansing of the soul.” Siegfried hesitantly opens up about the “inner corruption” that shames him, but finds he can talk more freely once Dr. Rivers reveals that he hides the same secret, albeit with less torment.

Siegfried also meets and mentors the younger writer Wilfred Owen while at the hospital, their bond sketched in a playful tango scene and, more poetically, a shot of their bodies drifting together in the facility’s swimming pool in the rain. They barely touch, but this is by far the most sensual image in Benediction . And it’s Owen’s poem “Disabled” that pushes Siegfried to the shattering catharsis of the film’s final scene.

Davies’ customary mix of conventional dramatic scenes with stylized interludes and posed tableaux works well enough. But the fluidity often falters in the crosscutting between the young Siegfried, an ineffably gentle gentleman in Lowden’s performance, and his embittered older self, all kindness erased over the years. Capaldi effectively plays this transformation into a cold, hardened man, brittle in his exchanges with both Hester and their son, George (Richard Goulding). The latter disapproves of his father’s decision to convert to Catholicism in his search for “something permanent, unchanging.”

All this remains absorbing, though it seldom acquires the charge of the more impressionistic scenes, powered by Lowden’s expressive readings of Sassoon’s poems. This is an elegant but staid drama, with its stately camerawork and characters often talking in stiff aphorisms. Perhaps it’s inevitably depressive given the degree to which the subject is defined by denial and self-doubt, questioning his artistic worth as much as his sexuality.

Someone always seems to end up looking out a window through the rain in Davies’ films — in this case, Capaldi’s older Siegfried, remembering the people who have touched his life in meaningful ways, with Owen seen last and longest. “And yet, life goes slowly on,” he says at one point in an excerpt from his writing. That simple, sad sentence could almost be a mission statement for Davies’ entire body of work, with its unhurried rhythms and its sense of endurance, carrying the burdens of the past. But it’s an especially apt summation of Benediction , which depicts a quest for personal salvation that remains unfulfilled.

Full credits

Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations) Distribution: Roadside Attractions Production companies: Emu Films, in association with Reiver Pictures Cast: Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeremy Irvine, Calam Lynch, Tom Blyth, Kate Phillips, Geraldine James, Anton Lesser, Gemma Jones, Ben Daniels, Suzanne Bertish, Matthew Tennyson, Julian Sands, Lia Williams, Richard Goulding, Jude Akuwudike Director-screenwriter: Terence Davies Producer: Michael Elliott Executive producers: Rose Garnett, Lizzie Francke, Paul Ashton, Margarethe Baillou, Norman Merry, Peter Hampton, Stephen Kelliher, Jack Lowden, John Taylor, Walli Ullah, Jim Mooney Director of photography: Nicola Daley Production designer: Andy Harris Costume designer: Annie Symons Editor: Alex Mackie Casting: Lucy Rands Sales: Bankside Films

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Summary Benediction explores the turbulent life of WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden). The writer and soldier was a complex man who survived the horrors of fighting in the First World War and was decorated for his bravery but who became a vocal critic of the government’s continuation of the war when he returned from service. His poetry was ... Read More

Directed By : Terence Davies

Written By : Terence Davies

Benediction

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Benediction

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Time Out says

Terence Davies’s Siegfried Sassoon biopic delivers artistic depth and savage putdowns delivered in crisp Edwardian

A glidingly elegant, emotionally ransacking story of queerness, repression and the past – in other words, a Terence Davies film – this Siegfried Sassoon biopic reaches out beyond the war poetry to carry on its shoulders a gay artist forced to hide his true nature. The excellent Jack Lowden ( Mary Queen of Scots ) plays Sassoon as a man haunted by the trenches, who bed-hops around the Bright Young Things of the ’20s but finds joy and peace elusive. Peter Capaldi plays the older, embittered version, who turns to religion for meaning. The film belongs more to the former than the latter, but the pair’s performances synch up neatly: the seeds of the older Sassoon’s jaundiced nature, manifest in his cutting relationship with his grown-up son, are sewn in the young poet’s disenchantment with post-war life, heartbreak and a hint of survivor’s guilt. Those scenes yield some of the sharpest lines in a film blessed with dialogue that wouldn’t be out of place in an Evelyn Waugh novel. The pin-sharp script is a welcome reminder of just what a great writer Davies is. ‘Your poetry has gone from the sublime to the meticulous,’ arch songwriter Ivor Novello stingingly observes of Sassoon. His film he balances heavy themes of trauma, sexuality and faith with the champagne fizz of a London society that just wants to forget everything.

It's  blessed with dialogue that wouldn’t be out of place in an Evelyn Waugh novel

Thanks to Lowden’s clever and subtle performance, you can feel Sassoon’s self-awareness and discomfort as he parties with devil-may-care socialites like Novello (Jeremy Irvine, terrific) and Stephen Tennant (a revelatory Calam Lynch). He’s becoming a drag for these hedonist gadabouts, a Bright Young Thing with the dimmer on. One great scene has him delivering an acidic poem about frivolous socialisers to a room full of partygoers. Davies lets you feel the air turning to ice. 

Indeed, the gifted cast is cannily picked to inhabit Benediction ’s ensemble of Edwardian notables: from Simon Russell Beale as Sassoon’s avuncular guardian angle, Robbie Ross, to Kate Phillips as the artist Hester Gatty, the woman he’d end up marrying. A benediction is a prayer for divine help. For any lover of beautifully crafted cinema with real emotional charge, Davies’s latest will feel a lot like an answer. In UK cinemas Fri May 13 .

Cast and crew

• Director: Terence Davies
• Screenwriter: Terence Davies
• Jack Lowden
• Kate Phillips
• Simon Russell Beale
• Peter Capaldi
• Ben Daniels
• Gemma Jones
• Geraldine James
• Calam Lynch

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Benediction Review

20 May 2022

Benediction

Droll banter is not a pleasure one might traditionally expect from the achingly sad films of Terence Davies . And yet Liverpool’s melancholy master of autobiography ( The Long Day Closes ) and adaptation ( The Deep Blue Sea ) has been in close touch lately with his inner Oscar Wilde, finding a fount of sparkling verbal wit in the life and work of iconic poets. First came A Quiet Passion , which depicted the quintessentially morbid Emily Dickinson as a silver-tongued conversationalist whose gift for the gab helped keep despair at bay. And now Davies has turned to a homegrown wordsmith of equally elegiac concerns, revelling in his cutting way with words while acknowledging the sorrow behind them.

Siegfried Sassoon ( Jack Lowden ), as Benediction presents him, was the voice of a devastated generation — a veteran who became a conscientious objector and spoke, through his revered work, for the countless young men lost in World War I. Davies weaves snippets of Sassoon’s writing throughout, setting his pained, evocative observations to archival footage of the battlefield. Early on, the artist fearlessly confronts his superior officers, risking a court martial to question their jingoistic motives. “Are you pro-German?” they incredulously enquire. “I’m pro-human,” he retorts.

Lowden keeps the writer’s amused, quick-witted charm in equilibrium with his moral exhaustion.

And yet Sassoon’s life wasn’t all doom and gloom. Unlike Dickinson, he got out and around, bed-hopping across the gay artist and socialite scene of the era. Benediction doubles as a glancing, sometimes witheringly funny depiction of Jazz-Age London, with various bright young things trading insults (and more) like characters in a Noël Coward play. Among them, in fact, is Coward cohort Ivor Novello ( Jeremy Irvine ), the dashing but caddish stage star who seduces Sassoon and then breaks his heart.

Lowden keeps the writer’s amused, quick-witted charm in equilibrium with his moral exhaustion. The impression is of someone wielding their intelligence defensively, warding off the darkness one quip at a time. Through this outstanding lead performance, Benediction articulates a vision of the Roaring Twenties as grand distraction, a mass denial of the shattering losses the world had just suffered. Occasionally, the film flashes forward to Sassoon’s twilight years, decades into a sexless marriage, his grief having outlasted his vivacity. One can’t help but see a little of Davies himself in the character’s incorrigible crankiness, especially with a grizzled Peter Capaldi as an elderly Sassoon, bellowing about the music of the modern world.

Benediction can’t sidestep every pitfall of the biopic, a genre prone to shapelessness. But Davies movingly honours the competing sides of his real-life subject, his anguished eloquence and his playful gadfly repartee. “You have to speak directly, not with another’s voice,” Sassoon encourages a young protégé who ends up perishing in battle not long after. Nevertheless, in channelling the spirit (and linguistic dexterity) of the poet, Davies deepens the range of his own voice. Who knew he had such bons mots in him?

Culture | Film

Benediction movie review: Jack Lowden shines in Terence Davies’ unflattering light as Siegfried Sassoon

Though Jack Lowden ’s often talked of as a potential Bond, the supremely gifted actor doesn’t need a franchise to put him on the map. Age 31, he’s as soulful-looking as Tom Hiddleston and as cheeky as Simon Pegg. Which comes in handy for this mercurial portrait of WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon. Lowden’s convincing as a playful charmer who when faced with horrors doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

Though stuffed with big houses and beautiful toffs, the latest offering from British writer-director, Terence Davies , was never going to seduce the Downton Abbey set. It’s too experimental; too slow. Nor will it convert those who found The Deep Blue Sea histrionic and/or A Quiet Passion uneven. But if you love Davies, you’ll know what to expect and be transported by scenes that hint at deep feelings, as opposed to nailing them down.

The closeted Sassoon, having become a vocal opponent of the war, (as well as the big whigs prolonging it), winds up in a psychiatric hospital, where he meets gay, state-educated, Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson; as shyly alert as a meerkat). In a thrillingly economical and virtually silent moment, the poets glide past each other in a swimming pool. The camera, from above, captures the pair’s tadpole wriggles and the fact that, after their heads almost touch, Owen breaks into a smile. The real-life Owen once wrote that he viewed Sassoon as “Keats + Christ... + Amenophis IV in profile”. Davies doesn’t invoke those words. A poet in his own right, he doesn’t need to.

Owen (easily more talented than Sassoon, as Benediction seems happy to acknowledge), is crucial to another extraordinary sequence. At the end of the film, we hear Owen’s poem, Disabled, and see fleeting glimpses of a working class, wheel-chair-bound soldier, left out in the cold as night falls. Seconds later, it’s Sassoon sitting in the darkness, his body intact, his mind anything but. For Davies, both the soldier and Sassoon are victims of a vicious brand of hypocrisy. England, here, is a country that adores battles but is repulsed by the battle-scarred, a country that idolises men, except when they idolise each other. (Julian Sands excels as a homophobic official, who all but doubles over with disgust at the sight of a same-sex tango).

Music, as ever with this director, provides lovely jolts. Archive footage of cattle, and British soldiers being treated like cattle, accompanies the song, Riders in the Sky (A Cowboy Legend), released by Vaughn Monroe, in 1950. The ditty is outrageously anachronistic. It’s American . Yet it’s perfect.

Benediction comes unstuck only when it seeks to interest us in Sassoon’s inter-war love life and subsequent God-bothering. Siegfried, apparently, had terrible taste in men and we are encouraged to boo two of his preening, promiscuous and poisonous lovers. Though Jeremy Irvine and Calam Lynch (as Ivor Novello and Stephen Tennant) massively overplay their parts, it’s the script that’s at fault. We can’t tell if the characters’ bitchy one-liners are meant to be tedious or titillating. If Davies is trying to demonstrate how empty these pretty boys are, he labours the point. If the plan was to have their Wildean wit double as a guilty pleasure, Davies should have worked harder on the gags. There are modern writers (hello, Alan Bennett) who can match Wilde. Davies isn’t one of them.

Even when it’s not glib, the dialogue in these “roaring 20s” segments is cringe-worthy. After Sassoon makes a reference to gay young things, Hester (Kate Phillips), a genial woman who will eventually become his wife, trills: “I think everyone should be gay, don’t you?” Our hero’s crashingly stodgy reply: “Only in the wider sense.”

We’re also supposed to care when, in snarly, sulky middle age, Sassoon (now played by Peter Capaldi ; wasted), hangs out in a Catholic church. But his confused quest for redemption feels so familiar. Meanwhile, there’s no mention of the fact that Sassoon’s father, Alfred, was Jewish. Or that Alfred converted, in order to marry Sassoon’s mother, to the absolute horror of his Orthodox family. That Sassoon went from being a High Anglican-raised agnostic to a Roman Catholic makes more sense, once you know his history. Without that context, it’s footling stuff.

So is Benediction worth seeing? At one point, Sassoon’s pretentious pal, Edith Sitwell (Lia Williams; spry), admits her most recent work has been met with less than rapturous enthusiasm. Though convinced that Façade – An Entertainment is a work of genius, she glumly repeats a wonderfully withering comment, made by a member of the audience: “It’s this sort of thing that makes one glad to be semi-conscious.”

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Some will find passages in Benediction hard to endure while sober, yet at its best it’s ferociously good. Here’s a period drama that shows an iconic figure getting wizened, rather than wiser. Davies is 76 years old. He may not have all the answers, but the questions he asks are timely and devastatingly profound.

137mins, cert 15. In cinemas

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‘Benediction’ Film Review: Terence Davies Confirms His Status as Poet Laureate of Biopics

Siegfried Sassoon faces the horrors of WWI and the strictures of the closet in this moving portrait

Most biopics are thuddingly prosaic: There’s a lot of “this happened, then that happened,” performed by a famous person covering themselves in latex in an attempt to resemble another famous person.

In the hands of British auteur Terence Davies, however, biopics can be poetry, although his choice of subject matter probably helps in that department. On the heels of his gorgeous and contemplative “A Quiet Passion,” about the life of Emily Dickinson, he returns with another passionately quiet portrait, this time exploring Siegfried Sassoon in “Benediction.”

It’s an impressionistic collage, and Davies skillfully jumps from the 1910s to the 1960s and back again. “Benediction” fleetingly encapsulates the horrors of WWI — Sassoon went from being a decorated soldier to an outspoken critic against those who would prolong the conflict — the shadow-world of British gay men in the decades before homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK, and the bitterness of an older man literally chasing after grace with a late-in-life conversion to Catholicism.

When young Siegfried (Jack Lowden, “Fighting With My Family”) discards his Military Cross and pens a blistering letter about the exploitive nature of the war, friends in power have him declared mentally unfit to keep him from facing a firing squad for treason. At the hospital, he’s treated by the compassionate Dr. Rivers (Ben Daniels, “The Crown”) and falls in love with fellow patient Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson), with Sassoon and Owen encouraging each other’s work before Owen is sent back to the front lines.

(It says a great deal about Davies’ style that the Chekhov’s gun in this film is a poem, namely Owen’s “Disabled,” which Sassoon reads to himself early in the film but doesn’t share with the audience until the final moments, with devastating poignancy.)

After the war, Sassoon mingles in London’s toniest literary circles, with a cadre of friends that include Oscar Wilde contemporary Robbie Ross (Simon Russell Beale, “The Death of Stalin”) and Edith Sitwell (Lia Williams). Sassoon’s lovers tend to be well-known as well, from popular music star Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) to Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch, “Bridgerton”), doyen of the era’s “Bright Young Things.”

The name-dropping does get a bit fast and furious for those not up on their literary-society figures of Britain between the wars — there’s a somewhat awkward introduction of T.E. Lawrence at one point — but Sassoon led the kind of life that brought him into constant contact with the glitterati of the moment. And while there’s an entire sub-genre of media about the rich and beautiful gay men of the era forced by society into the closet (“Maurice,” “Brideshead Revisited”), the inclusion of Ross as a fairly major character helps to underscore the cultural context; the Wilde trial, after all, had taken place in 1895, a recent memory for this entire generation.

It’s a portrait of dreams dashed and emotional potential unfulfilled. Peter Capaldi takes the reins as an older Sassoon, bitterly dissatisfied with his conformist marriage to Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips, then Gemma Jones). As with most biopics, “Benediction” doesn’t get to everything (notably his separation from Hester and later friendship with E.M. Forster), but everything that Davies includes creates a full emotional portrait.

Anyone making a biographical film would be well advised to study “Benediction,” particularly the ways that Davies and editor Alex Mackie (“Mary Shelley”) and cinematographer Nicola Daley (“Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards”) hop back and forth in time, using documentary WWI footage and other visual and audio memory triggers to connect disparate points of Sassoon’s life. These transitions are handled with a graceful elegance that gently underscores the melancholy tone.

The performances are uniformly excellent, but Lowden is undoubtedly the standout. He takes the uniquely British conflict between passion and formality, fury and etiquette, and gives it vivid life. With so many literal waxworks taking home awards for their grotesque turns in lesser films, Lowden’s subtle work here is a reminder of the power of precision underscored by pain.

The act of writing has tended to be flagrantly non-cinematic, but with these last two films, Davies proves that the internal life of the mind can indeed be explored and portrayed in a visual medium. With every scene a stanza, “Benediction” is a lyrical triumph.

“Benediction” opens in U.S. theaters June 3.

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Benediction review: Terence Davies tends to his 20th century tragedies with care

Inspired by the life of siegfried sassoon, terence davies’s evocative drama is no cradle-to-grave biopic, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Terence Davies. Starring: Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeremy Irvine, Calam Lynch, Tom Blyth, Kate Phillips. 12A, 137 minutes.

“Pain is not the only terror,” laments the war poet Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction . But these agonies are nameless to him and, in Terence Davies ’s film about his life, we spend a great deal of time fruitlessly trying to put words to his sadness. Benediction isn’t a cradle-to-grave biopic, nor does it dramatise a single, pivotal event. It’s one man’s breathless search, careening back and forth through the chapters of his life in search of something concrete and true. It’s beautiful, but only in the way it tends to its tragedies with such care.

The film begins in 1914. We watch Siegfried ( Jack Lowden ) and his brother Hamo (Thom Ashley) as they’re fitted for their officer’s uniforms, beaming from ear to ear. Within minutes, Hamo is dead in Gallipoli and Siegfried is hospitalised with trench fever. Traumatised, he refuses to reenlist for a war he now believes has been “deliberately prolonged”, begging for a court-martial and a platform to speak for the dead and deposed. Even if it would end in his own execution. But the social standing of his family prevents such a thing – he’s simply bundled off to an Edinburgh military sanatorium under the pretence of shell shock.

There, he finds intimacy with fellow poet Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson) and subsequently lives with relative openness as a gay man – cocooned within the Bright Young Things of Twenties London. Davies hones in on three of his most notable romances: with actors Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine, eyes seductively rimmed with kohl) and Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth), as well as socialite Stephen Tennant ( Bridgerton ’s Calam Lynch). All three end in heartbreak. “You must redeem my life for me,” he begs the woman, Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips), who’s about to become his wife.

The only steady ground in Benediction lies in Sassoon’s lines of poetry, recited by Lowden and played alongside newsreels of muddied soldiers staring out of the screen – at us, at Siegfried, at Davies too, perhaps. It’s a widely agreed-upon thesis that every one of the director’s films functions, in some way, as autobiography. There are material connections in his early dramas Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992), set in his native Liverpool. But here, as well as in A Quiet Passion (2016) – his ode to Emily Dickinson – we see Davies refracted through the soul of a fellow poet.

“I have hated being gay, and I’ve been celibate for most of my life,” the director told The Guardian in 2015. And there’s a clear sense of internal torture at work in Benediction , reflected in the calibrated harshness of Nicola Daley’s cinematography. A shot of Siegfried tossing his Military Cross into the River Mersey (an incident debunked when the medal was found in an attic), borders on the garish; several scenes later, the sight of Wilfred and Siegfried floating past each other in a pool, on the verge of touching but not quite doing so, feels divine. That contrast alone is oddly disarming.

Even as Lowden’s face sinks, with the shaky resignation of a man who can feel an entire army marching over his grave, the film sparks up around him with the many barbs and putdowns of that era’s accomplished wits. Irvine and Lynch’s lines are both scathing and silk-spun. A highlight? “Your poetry has gone from the sublime to the meticulous.” Simon Russell Beale appears as Robbie Ross, a devoted friend of Oscar Wilde; Lia Williams is fantastically haughty as the poet Edith Sitwell.

When we meet an older Siegfried (now played, scowlingly, by Peter Capaldi ), his search for “something permanent [and] unchanging” has unsatisfactorily led him to the Catholic Church. But nothing will slow those slippery, anonymous terrors – and Benediction , in its final blow, leaves us simply with the downpour of Siegfried’s tears at the sight of a soldier, his legs amputated. The final, heartwrenching lines of Owen’s “Disabled” plays us out: “How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come/And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?”

‘Benediction’ is in cinemas from Friday 20 May

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Benediction review: An operatic portrait of postwar devastation

In the final act of director Terence Davies’ achingly beautiful new film Benediction , a son asks his father, “Why do you hate the modern world?” The father responds, “Because it’s younger than I am.” It is a wry, observant, and delicately funny response, but it also speaks to a sense of disconnection — namely, the separation one man feels between himself and the world around him.

That feeling of isolation and loneliness is at the heart of Benediction , Davies’ film about the life and work of British war poet Siegfried Sassoon . In the film, Sassoon is played by two actors, Peter Capaldi and Jack Lowden, and across Benediction ’s 137-minute runtime, Davies’ script jumps between the various stages of Sassoon’s life. By doing so, Davies gradually builds an intricate portrait of the various moments of regret, shame, heartbreak, and devastation that not only shaped Sassoon’s life but also his poetry.

If this sounds like it might be familiar territory for Davies, that’s because it is. Davies has long been fascinated by the lonely figures who may or may not have wandered through the streets during England’s respective postwar eras. As both a soldier with divisive antiwar views and a closeted gay man, Sassoon more than makes sense as the latest addition to Davies’ ever-growing catalog of lonely men and women.

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A haunting exploration of loneliness

As the film’s primary lead, Lowden makes a lasting impression as the younger Sassoon, deftly weaving together the character’s various contradictory emotions — namely, his yearning for both partnership and isolation — until his Sassoon feels like a complete man. In the film’s first half, Lowden is not only asked to jump between Sassoon’s combative impulses, but also to lay bare his arrogance and insecurities in several stunning conversation scenes that pair him opposite Ben Daniels’ Dr. Rivers, the psychologist tasked with monitoring Sassoon during his involuntary stay at a military mental hospital.

Capaldi, meanwhile, takes the notes of loneliness and heartbreak present in Lowden’s performance and hardens them. His Sassoon is more distant and uncaring than his younger self, but Capaldi’s nuanced performance easily bridges the gap between his version of the character and Lowden’s. Davies, for his part, only makes that feat easier. The director pulls out a number of his usual tricks in Benediction , including his penchant for picking surprisingly stirring needle drops and his unparalleled use of slow dissolves, which blend time periods together and add stunning touches of surrealism to even the most ordinary of frames.

The film does also share the same meditative, unhurried pace as many of Davies’ previous outings . Benediction does occasionally meander and lose momentum, which makes it sometimes difficult for the film to hit its intended emotional beats. Fortunately, Davies’ stunning visual eye and Nicola Daley’s gorgeous cinematography make looking at Benediction an undeniably rewarding experience even in its most lethargic moments.

Of the many beautiful images that Davies creates in Benediction , few are quite as innovative or thematically rich as the moment when Capaldi’s older Sassoon takes a moment to watch rain fall outside his countryside home. Throughout the scene, Capaldi’s face always remains on his window’s far left side, but as he watches the rain pour outside, the window’s middle and right sections become overtaken by translucent images of people that Sassoon has loved and lost throughout his life.

It is a beautiful moment, one that briefly flattens the distance that exists between the past and the present, but the window’s wooden dividers also further reinforce Sassoon’s separation from those he loves. That’s because, even in their moments of remembrance, Davies’ protagonists remain irreparably separate from everyone else. It’s that unbridgeable gap that imbues so much of Davies’ work with an inescapable sense of melancholy, but it’s also a testament to Davies’ brilliance that he never feels the need to force his characters to overcome their loneliness.

Instead, Davies understands that sometimes just acknowledging the things that keep us apart from those we love is enough to, as one character in Benediction proposes, cleanse our souls.

Benediction is set to hit theaters on Friday, June 3.

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Benediction review: terence davies' siegfried sassoon biopic soars & surprises.

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Sexual repression is often represented in period pieces as a secret that could get you killed. That is especially the case when the military is involved and the fear for one's life is certainly on the table in Benediction . However, it is with pure confidence and outward strength that the gay characters in this world thrive inside. Writer-director Terence Davies may have indulged with a few too many historical cameos, but he still manages to make every performance in the film one audiences can't take their eyes off of. Both his writing and direction live in a world where the late poet Siegfried Sassoon comes to life. Benediction is graceful, intentional, and ripe with classic English poetry that pairs perfectly with found footage of World War I.

When Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden) enters the war, his role as a soldier quickly evolves into that of a conscientious objector. The words he would put down in the letter to his commanding officers would go on to serve two purposes — get him sent to a psychiatric institution and solidify his future as a poet. His stay as an inpatient brings more good than bad. He finds other like-minded individuals, not just as lovers, but also people willing to think outside of the box in such a black and white world. Both his roommate and therapist offer great help in his journey. Once he is eligible to leave, many of the people Siegfried once loved are unfortunately dead, but he is truly free for the first time in his young life.

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Lowden ( Dunkirk ) gives a great central performance. Thankfully for audiences, the entire cast is just as good as he is, if not better. Rather than do his best historical impression of the real-life poet, Lowden embodies a sense of hope and humanity that is universally relatable to anyone who has ever wanted more from life. Lowden’s performance is restrained for a character so young, but he also makes it a point to never force condescension on his counterparts. In an era of musicians, writers, and poets he only ever gets smug when pushed to the limits, something his contemporaries cannot say. Superb contributions from Jeremy Irvine ( Treadstone ), Calam Lynch ( Bridgerton ), and Peter Capaldi ( Doctor Who ), who plays the elder Siegfried, make every scene a joy regardless no matter who is in it.

The script makes a point to delve into the relationship these men have with each other and not the world's relationship with them, which is a strength. So when one of Lowden’s exes declares, “Friends may come, friends may go, enemies are always faithful,” he is referencing issues of self-hatred in the gay community, not homophobia. In these conversations, Benediction sets itself apart from other films in the genre.

The interpolation of found footage from World War I and live-action recordings are a very welcome choice by Davies. The film begins with minutes upon minutes of found footage playing under poetry. There is a moment where one wonders how long this will go on, but it's a simple yet effective move Davies uses to subvert expectations. Throughout Benediction —  whether it be the current timeline or the flash-forwards to Siegfried's later life — characters interact, watch, and even fade in and out of the found footage. As a story about people living in their own inevitability, such images are always striking.

Benediction is slow-paced, but purposeful to the very end. Every performance is better than the one before it and several familiar faces are putting in their best work to date. There is nothing flashy about Davies' style and the found footage doesn’t feel obtuse; it feels imminent. The film sets out to execute a plan and does so without missing a beat. It is rare to extract so much emotion from a mostly technical achievement, but Benediction  does just that.

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Benediction   releases in theaters on June 3. The film is 137 minutes and rated PG-13 for disturbing war images, some sexual material, and thematic elements.

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Benediction, from director Terence Davies, examines the life and secret affairs of queer English war poet Siegfried Sassoon

Terence Davies does not attempt to re-create the putrid trenches of the Western Front in his new film about the war poet Siegfried Sassoon. Best remembered as mentor to Wilfred Owen, he was awarded the Military Cross for "conspicuous bravery" — shortly before he chose to boldly denounce the war as unconscionable in 1917.

Despite the explosive symphonies of mud and blood that propel films like 1917 or Dunkirk – and you may recognise the latter's Jack Lowden as the youthful Sassoon here, while ex-Doctor Who Peter Capaldi plays the poet in his autumnal years – writer-director Davies is of the belief that no re-creation, however grand the budget, can purport to get close to the awful quiddity of war.

In Benediction, the ninth feature from the great British director (who made his auspicious debut in 1988 with autobiographical tone poem Distant Voices, Still Lives), archival footage – of men who grip their bayonets and stare into the camera lens; of corpses slumped and left to rot – subs in for the combat through which Sassoon's poetic and moral consciousness was forged.

Often used for flashbacks, these degraded black-and-white images contrast the rest of the film and its various refined interiors, which are crisply rendered by cinematographer Nicola Daley. The haunting power of such fragments comes precisely from the sense that the reality they show exists at a remove of more than a century from the viewer; rather than the simulated immersion offered by works of shrapnel-studded spectacle, there is the sense of an unbridgeable gap in experience.

But in Davies's telling, Sassoon's story is as much a tragic gay romance as it is a war movie.

The death in combat of Wilfred Owen – a mere week before Armistice Day, 1918 – would leave an indelible mark on Sassoon, who was not only a mentor to the younger poet (played by Matthew Tennyson), but a suitor. Their mutual infatuation sparked in the unlikely haven of Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where they would produce some of their finest work (including Owens's Anthem for Doomed Youth , the stinging accompaniment to one of the film's documentary montages), while being treated for what would soon be termed "shell shock".

Those familiar with the filmmaker's work – his are domestic worlds of small pleasures and painful revelations – would no doubt guess him to be entirely uninterested in military strategy or the politics of any particular attack or retreat. The conflict that most concerns him in Benediction, as always, is one that plays out on the battlefield of the mind, where the self is both aggressor and casualty.

But the degree to which Davies brings Sassoon's homosexuality to the fore suggests a new candour in the septuagenarian, whose struggles with his own orientation – growing up Catholic in 1950s working class Liverpool made being gay a profoundly distressing prospect – have previously found expression in the pent-up sexual urges of his different on-screen analogues, from the prepubescent Bud of 1992's The Long Day Closes through to reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, the subject of his last film, 2016's A Quiet Passion .

"Will you stay? Just for a few more moments," Siegfried entreats Wilfred on the gravel path outside the hospital, the latter's return to the trenches imminent. Facing each other, eyes cast down, the silence is suffused with emotions that propriety prevented from being expressed. A voice offscreen beckons Wilfred; the two men are not – will never be – alone, and in place of anything more intimate a handshake must suffice as their parting gesture.

For those who are rusty on their high school history, Davies quickly snuffs out the notion of a potential reunion: Siegfried's voice over – aptly, he is the narrator of his own life – announces Wilfred's death as the car pulls away from Craiglockhart, just moments after their goodbye.

There is a similar collapsing of history in the way that Davies – who has always preferred narratives that develop according to emotional logic rather than linear time – intercuts scenes of Capaldi's Siegfried, grey of hair and pinched of face, with those of Lowden's; the young man is on a track towards an intensely embittered, unhappily married middle age, this future disaffection inscribed in the traumas of his youth.

Before he seeks absolution in the arms of Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips in her youth, then Gemma Jones) and finally Jesus, Siegfried tries out smooth-talking entertainer Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine, who wouldn't look out of place in a 90s erotic thriller), swishy socialite Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch), and theatre actor Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth) – his entanglements revealing the Wildean subset of London's cultured upper crust; the privileged few able to cruise soirees and restaurants with near impunity.

These men dazzle the poet, but ultimately prove too changeable, and too quick to tire of his affections.

"Who can know the secrets of a human heart?" asks Ivor airily, by way of dismissing his dalliances with others. "Usually those who don't have one," comes Siegfried's sour reply. (What a boon that Benediction offers Davies a chance to indulge his sharp wit, obscured in his more languorous work.)

Like A Quiet Passion, in which Cynthia Nixon played Dickinson, Benediction is a portrait of an artist passed over in their time, and burdened with outsider status even in their own select circles.

Of the 1800-odd poems Dickinson penned in her lifetime, only a handful were published, while Sassoon's work – though it exhibited a frankness of style and subject matter that influenced the modernists – was rendered outmoded by the arrival of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. ("Eliot got the Order of Merit – and the Nobel Prize," sniffs Capaldi's Siegfried. "I've had to make do with the Queen's Award for Poetry.")

And Sassoon, like Dickinson, would increasingly choose monastic retreat over life's barrage of cruelties and complexities.

Benediction might be a war movie, but the devastation wrought is of a much subtler kind.

Benediction is in cinemas now.

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Review: ‘Benediction’ is a shattering biopic of the English war poet Siegfried Sassoon

Jack Lowden illuminates Sassoon’s struggles with his sexuality, his art and his destiny in this moving, intensely personal drama from Terence Davies

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“Benediction,” Terence Davies’ achingly beautiful portrait of the English war poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon, is a movie of acute sadness and intense pleasure. The pleasure and the sadness are inextricable, which seems fitting, given how closely aesthetic bliss and moral despair were entwined in Sassoon’s own art. In furious, somber and, yes, frequently thrilling language, he laid bare the horrors of World War I and excoriated the moral blindness of its architects and supporters. His poem “Suicide in the Trenches,” first published in 1918, ends with this stinging rebuke:

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

A decorated veteran of the Western Front before he turned conscientious objector, Sassoon knew of what he spoke. Sprinkling passages of his poetry over somber reams of old war footage, “Benediction” is, among other things, a mournful tribute to the wounded and fallen, suffused with a particular compassion for those survivors who, like Sassoon, never shook off the trauma of what they experienced. Few filmmakers have Davies’ gift for evoking states of loneliness, and here he suggests the terrible isolation visited upon those who endured the horrors of armed conflict.

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But “Benediction,” venturing well beyond the war years that fired Sassoon’s own poetic imagination, is about more than one kind of isolation. As a portrait of a gay man living in early 20th century Britain, it could scarcely be otherwise. And in the Scottish actor Jack Lowden ( “Dunkirk,” “Fighting With My Family” ), Sassoon has found a most eloquent and empathetic interpreter. Through Lowden’s thoughtful, tender, quietly charismatic and finally anguished performance, we come to grasp not only Sassoon’s struggles with his sexuality, his art and his destiny, but also the unpredictable evolution of those struggles over time. Drifting between past and future, history and memory, “Benediction” captures the strange, specific alchemy by which contradictory fragments of identity assemble themselves into a soul.

It goes without saying that Davies’ insistence on this kind of emotional interiority — and his accompanying disinterest in expository montages and wildly gestural, prosthetic-laden performances — run counter to the strategies and priorities of the average mainstream biopic. (That much was already clear from “A Quiet Passion,” his splendid 2017 portrait of another great poet, Emily Dickinson.) And his formal approach — in particular the fluid, languid rhythms of Alex Mackie’s editing; the stately, almost symmetrical widescreen images composed by the cinematographer Nicola Daley; and a soundtrack that samples Stravinsky, the Gershwins and other music-hall staples of the era — would be hard to mistake for that of any other filmmaker.

But the singularity of “Benediction” arises from more than just a spirited rejection of Hollywood convention. What has united most of Davies’ dramas (excluding his masterful early memoirs, “Distant Voices, Still Lives” and “The Long Day Closes” ) is a deep if understated identification with his protagonists, an ability to perceive — in the tragic destinies of women like Lily Bart in “The House of Mirth” and Hester Collyer in “The Deep Blue Sea” — a shared alienation from the prevailing codes and mores of one’s era. To call “Benediction” a deeply personal film might thus seem unremarkable, since Davies seldom deals in the impersonal. But even by his standards, the story of a fellow gay English artist, even one locked away in an earlier era, touches resonant insights and unusual depths of feeling.

And that feeling, more often than not, is one of bitter failure and futility. We see the young Siegfried’s forceful determination when he denounces “a war of aggression and conquest” that has needlessly claimed the lives of millions, including his younger brother, Hamo (Thom Ashley). But his defiant protest has little effect; rather than being court-martialed, Siegfried is declared mentally ill and sent to a Scottish military hospital. There, he meets a sympathetic therapist, Dr. Rivers (Ben Daniels), and a fellow convalescing war poet, the great Wilfred Owen (a sweet Matthew Tennyson), the object of an unconsummated first love that dares not even whisper its name. But despite the emotional and artistic bond that forms between the two men, Owen returns to battle and is killed in action — a tragedy that, for Siegfried, sets the pattern for a lifetime’s worth of thwarted longings.

Those longings are occasionally sated by the many handsome, well-spoken young men who move within Siegfried’s artistic circle. (They also inspire some commiseration with older mentors like the journalist Robbie Ross, a friend of Oscar Wilde’s played here by the excellent Simon Russell Beale.) One of the achievements of “Benediction,” as it drifts from Siegfried’s quiet family home in Kent (Geraldine James plays his warmly supportive mother) to the bustling theaters, restaurants and house parties of London, is to illuminate the pockets of privilege enjoyed by wealthy, culturally influential gay men in an otherwise repressive and inhospitable era. But the pleasures of such privilege — the companionship of friends, the expression of long-forbidden desires — also come with a corrosive aftertaste of confusion, betrayal and heartache.

Much of that heartache is dispensed by the popular musician Ivor Novello (a smoldering, viperous Jeremy Irvine), who sings his witty ditties at the piano and dispenses little nuggets of verbal poison everywhere else. Ivor treats the besotted “Siggy” as callously as he does his many other lovers; they include the theater actor and director Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth), in whom Siegfried briefly discovers a kindred spirit, similarly well acquainted with what Shaw calls “the inconveniences of this shadow-life we lead.” But our hero’s great love from this period is Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch), a narcissistic socialite who winds up leaving him most heartbroken of all.

Davies’ gift for caustic witticisms is at its full strength in these scenes, in which Siegfried, for all his own lingual flair, is often overmatched by his paramours for sheer drawing-room-comedy vitriol. In time, exhausted and devastated, he will seek comfort in Catholicism and also embrace the stability and social respectability of marriage, to the poet and artist Hester Gatty (a fine Kate Phillips). This compromise is shown to exact a brutal toll in somber bookending scenes set near the end of Sassoon’s life. (An acerbic Peter Capaldi plays the older, disillusioned Siegfried; Gemma Jones is quietly touching as the long-suffering Hester, while Richard Goulding plays their grown son, George.)

The sense of waste and futility that haunts these later scenes is crushing, not least because it seems to hint at regrets and resentments that lie beyond the reach of the movie’s subject. It’s hard to watch the elderly Siegfried, seething with contempt and self-defeat and railing against rock ’n’ roll music, and not be reminded of Davies’ own well-documented ambivalence about his homosexuality, his Catholicism and the ever-shifting tides of popular culture.

But if “Benediction” is itself a declaration of outsiderhood, one that stands poignantly apart from cinema’s more affirming narratives of queer awakening, Davies rarely allows this subtext to overpower the specificities of his subject. Nor does he lose sight of the larger tragedy that so irrevocably shaped Sassoon’s life and art. The final moments, set to a staggering recitation of Owen’s poem “Disabled,” are particularly devastating in the way that they bring home Sassoon’s haunting memories of love and war — and his firsthand knowledge of the destructive power of both.

‘Benediction’

Rating: PG-13, for disturbing war images, some sexual material and thematic elements When: Opens Friday Where: AMC UTC, Angelika Carmel Mountain, Landmark Hillcrest Running time: 2 hours, 17 minutes

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Why the speech by Kansas City Chiefs kicker was embraced at Benedictine College’s commencement

The Benedictine College sign is seen Wednesday, May 15, 2024, in Atchison, Kan., days after Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech that has been gaining attention. Butker’s speech has raised some eyebrows with his proclamations of conservative politics and Catholicism, but he received a standing ovation from graduates and other attendees of the commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 11. (AP Photo/Nick Ingram)

Students leave after attending a Catholic Mass at Benedictine College Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023, in Atchison, Kan. Students told The Associated Press in interviews they embrace the college’s emphasis on Catholic teaching and practice. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

FILE - Catholics pray during Mass at Benedictine College Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023, in Atchison, Kan. Enrollment, now about 2,200, has doubled in 20 years. Some 85% of its students are Catholic, according to the Cardinal Newman Society. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

The campus at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., was quiet on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, days after Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech that was getting attention. Butker’s speech has raised some eyebrows with his proclamations of conservative politics and Catholicism during his weekend speech, but he received a standing ovation from graduates and other attendees of the commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 11. (AP Photo/Nick Ingram)

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Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker may have stirred controversy in some quarters for his proclamations of conservative politics and Catholicism on Saturday, but he received a standing ovation from graduates and other attendees of the May 11 commencement ceremony at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

The fast-growing college is part of a constellation of conservative Catholic colleges that tout their adherence to church teachings and practice — part of a larger conservative movement in parts of the U.S. Catholic Church.

Butker’s 20-minute speech hit several cultural flashpoints.

Butker, a conservative Catholic himself, dismissed Pride month as consisting of the “deadly sin sort of pride” while denouncing abortion and President Joe Biden’s handling of the pandemic. He said women are told “diabolical lies” about career ambition when “one of the most important titles of all” is that of homemaker. He said this is not time for “the church of nice” and in particular blasted Catholics who support abortion rights and “dangerous gender ideologies.”

WHAT IS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE?

Benedictine College is a Catholic college in Atchison, Kansas, that traces its roots to 1858. It is located about 60 miles north of Kansas City., and has an enrollment of about 2,200.

LOTS OF COLLEGES ARE CATHOLIC. WHAT MAKES IT DISTINCTIVE?

In some ways, Benedictine College sounds like a typical Catholic college. Its “mission as a Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts, residential college is the education of men and women within a community of faith and scholarship,” according to its website.

But its home to more traditional expressions of Catholicism, such as the Latin Mass, all-night prayer vigils and a strict code of conduct. Its mission statement further cites its commitment to “those specific matters of faith of the Roman Catholic tradition, as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and handed down in the teachings of the Church.”

The school gets a high ranking from the Cardinal Newman Society, a group that touts nearly two-dozen conservative colleges that exhibit what it calls “faithful Catholic education.” That includes upholding church teachings and Catholic identity while providing ample Masses and other devotional activities in shaping their students.

The society seeks to differentiate schools that “refuse to compromise their Catholic mission” from those that have become “battlegrounds for today’s culture wars.” Others praised by the society include Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., Ave Maria University in Florida and Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.

The society’s ranking says Benedictine benefits from having monks in residence, multiple Masses and prayer groups, spiritually focused organizations and theology programs with professors with a “mandatum” of approval from the local bishop.

HOW HAS THAT RESONATED WITH STUDENTS?

Benedictine’s enrollment has doubled in the past 20 years. Some 85% of its students are Catholic, according to the Cardinal Newman Society.

Students told The Associated Press in interviews they embrace the college’s emphasis on Catholic teaching and practice.

“It’s a renewal of, like, some really, really good things that we might have lost,” one student told the AP in its recent article on the revival of conservative Catholicism.

OTHER FACTS

Annual tuition for full-time undergraduates is $35,350, but Benedictine says 100% of its students receive some form of financial aid.

Benedictine’s sports teams, called the Ravens, compete in National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Its athletics department says it is committed to ”setting the highest standards for academic success, athletic competition, ethical behavior, fiscal responsibility, and spiritual development.”

HOW DID GRADUATES REACT TO BUTKER’S SPEECH?

Video of the commencement shows virtually all the graduates and spectators rising to a standing ovation, but student interviews showed a more mixed reaction.

ValerieAnne Volpe, 20, who graduated with an art degree, lauded Butker for saying things that “people are scared to say.”

“I was thinking about my dad, who was also here, and how he’s probably clapping and so happy to see what he would say is a real man (reflecting) family values, good religious upbringing and representation of Christ to people,” she said. “You can just hear that he loves his wife. You can hear that he loves his family.”

Kassidy Neuner, 22, said the speech felt “a little degrading” and gave the impression that only women can be a homemaker.

“I think that men have that option as well,” said Neuner, who will be spending a gap year teaching before going to law school. “And to point this out specifically that that’s what we’re looking forward to in life seems like our four years of hard work wasn’t really important.”

Elle Wilbers, 22, who is heading to medical school in the fall, said the Catholic faith focuses on mothers, so that portion of the speech wasn’t surprising. She was more shocked by his criticism of priests and bishops “misleading their flocks” and a quip comparing LGBTQ+ Pride month to one of the seven deadly sins.

“We should have compassion for the people who have been told all their life that the person they love is like, it’s not okay to love that person,” Wilbers said. “It was sort of just a shock. I was like, ‘Is he really saying this right now?’”

WHAT DID BENEDICTINE’S NUNS SAY?

The Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, one of the founding sponsors of Benedictine College, issued a statement Thursday criticizing Buter’s speech, contending it did not properly represent the college’s values.

“Instead of promoting unity in our church, our nation, and the world, his comments seem to have fostered division,” the statement said.

“One of our concerns was the assertion that being a homemaker is the highest calling for a woman,” it added. “We sisters have dedicated our lives to God and God’s people, including the many women whom we have taught. ... These women have made a tremendous difference in the world in their roles as wives and mothers and through their God-given gifts in leadership, scholarship, and their careers.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

‘Oh, Canada’ Review: Paul Schrader Separates the Art From the Artist in Prismatic Portrait of a Dying Director

Toning down his typically confrontational style, Schrader reunites with Richard Gere (40-odd years after 'American Gigolo') to capture the career-reassessing soul of Russell Banks' next-to-last book.

By Peter Debruge

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Straying from the hotheaded “Taxi Driver” style that has dominated much of his career, Paul Schrader pays ruminative and respectful tribute to his late friend, novelist Russell Banks, who gave the writer-director the raw material for one of his best films, “Affliction” — and now, for one of his best films in years. Adapted from Banks’ “Foregone” (and given the title the author told Schrader he wanted for the book), “Oh, Canada” presents a dying artist’s final testimony as a multifaceted film-within-a-film, honoring Banks while also revealing so many of Schrader’s own thoughts on mortality.

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As Leonard sits for the camera, he shows zero interest in his legacy — the thing that drives so many young artists. He’s agreed to do this interview for Emma’s benefit, demanding that she be in the room (peripheral at first, Thurman proves every bit as strong as the role requires). In theory, Malcolm will ask the questions, but in practice, Leonard directs the shoot, responding for his wife’s benefit — and therein lies the soul of this profound if slightly scattered film.

What do these widescreen vignettes represent: the truth? Leonard’s memories? Or are they a more literal representation of what he shares with the cameras, which might be distorted or outright invented, considering his condition? The answer doesn’t really matter as Schrader builds a mosaic of Leonard’s life, cutting back to the aged director at times, as he stubbornly insists on being honest with them, with himself, with us.

Playing out like omniscient (if potentially unreliable) B-roll, the flashbacks come in a bit of a jumble. Leonard starts by talking about a moment in his second marriage when he and his pregnant wife Alicia (Kristine Froseth) were about to buy a house in Vermont. Days before Leonard was supposed to deliver the down payment, his wealthy father-in-law made a proposition to run the family business. At that point, Leonard dreamed of being a novelist. He was not one to be tied down, as another, earlier series of flashbacks (these in black and white) depict.

Leonard’s entire reputation has been founded on the myth that he fled the United States for Canada, as either a draft dodger or a conscientious objector. The truth isn’t quite so romantic — in fact, it’s downright anti-romantic, as Leonard describes a lifelong pattern of walking out on women. (At one point, he admits to seducing Diana.) In addition to Leonard’s narration, “Oh, Canada” privileges the voice of his abandoned son, Cornel (Zach Shaffer), whom he strategically neglected to mention to Emma during their more-than-30-year marriage.

Feeling death looming, Leonard needs to come clean. He likens the process of doing this interview to praying (“Whether or not you believe in God, you don’t lie when you pray,” he says), but it’s more of a confession, and a somewhat confused one at that, given the film’s prismatic and audaciously nonlinear structure. It probably doesn’t help that Gere is constantly popping up in scenes set in the ’60s. Now in his 70s — and notoriously outspoken on social media — Schrader has been quite public about his personal health issues. With this film, he confronts the ugly and seemingly unjust truth of dying.

Once driven by his loins, Leonard does his interview with a urostomy bag hanging by his side. When the young female intern leans in to attach his mic, Leonard takes a deep whiff (classier than the cliché where he might look down her blouse). How difficult it must have been for this incorrigible womanizer to get older, how necessary in satisfying his libido that false legend surely was. Now, he has no need to sustain it. From Emma, he seeks not forgiveness but greater intimacy.

This is ultimately Banks’ story, though one can feel Schrader weaving his own ideas into Leonard’s worldview, as America’s most eschatological living director shares insights into this cultural moment, when countless artists have been called out for bad behavior. How many have escaped this moral reckoning? Here, Leonard brings that scrutiny upon himself, exposing his shortcomings in a way that, should Malcolm’s movie ever come out, would surely undermine his reputation, to which Schrader asks: Is the role of art to be respectable? Can it really ever be honest?

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Competition), May 17, 2024. Running time: 94 MIN.

• Production: An Arclight Films International presentation of a Northern Lights, Vested Interest, Ottocento, Left Home Prods. production, in association with Exemplary Films, Carte Blanche Entertainment, One Two Twenty Entertainment, Sipur Studios. Producers: Tiffany Boyle, Luisa Law, Meghan Hanlon, Scott Lastaiti, David Gonzales. Executive producers: Gary Hamilton, Jon Adgemi, Ryan Hamilton, John Molloy, Brian Beckmann, Andrea Chung Ying Ye, Rob Hinderliter, Caerthan Banks, Riccardo Maddalosso, Steven D. Kravitz, Joel Michaely, Terri Garbarini, Steven Demmler, Tom Ogden, Damiano Tucci, Andrea Bucko, Kathryn M. Moseley, Braxton Pope, Oliver Ridge Elsa Ramo, R. Wesley Sierk Emilio Schenker, Kyle Stroud, Arun K. Thapar, Eyal Rimmon, Gideon Tadmor. Co-executive producers: Bill Way, Susan Beer, Elliott Whitton, Yuwei Du Sophia Banks, Divya Shahani, Judd Erlich, Aman Thapar, Yuchuan Cao, Jay Brunley, Tiziano Tucci.
• Crew: Director, writer: Paul Schrader, based on the novel “Foregone” by Russell Banks. Camera: Andrew Wonder. Editors: Benjamin Rodriguez Jr.Music: Phosphorescent. Music supervisor: Dina Juntila.
• With: Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, Jacob Elordi.

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Benedictine College nuns denounce Harrison Butker's speech at their school

John Helton

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker speaks to the media during NFL football Super Bowl 58 opening night on Feb. 5, 2024, in Las Vegas. Butker railed against Pride month along with President Biden's leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and his stance on abortion during a commencement address at Benedictine College last weekend. Charlie Riedel/AP hide caption

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker speaks to the media during NFL football Super Bowl 58 opening night on Feb. 5, 2024, in Las Vegas. Butker railed against Pride month along with President Biden's leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and his stance on abortion during a commencement address at Benedictine College last weekend.

An order of nuns affiliated with Benedictine College rejected Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison's Butker's comments in a commencement speech there last weekend that stirred up a culture war skirmish.

"The sisters of Mount St. Scholastica do not believe that Harrison Butker's comments in his 2024 Benedictine College commencement address represent the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested," the nuns wrote in a statement posted on Facebook .

In his 20-minute address , Butker denounced abortion rights, Pride Month, COVID-19 lockdowns and "the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion" at the Catholic liberal arts college in Atchison, Kan.

He also told women in the audience to embrace the "vocation" of homemaker.

"I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross the stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you're going to get in your career?" he asked. "Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world."

For many Missouri Catholics, abortion rights means choosing between faith, politics

That was one of the themes that the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica took issue with.

"Instead of promoting unity in our church, our nation, and the world, his comments seem to have fostered division," they wrote. "One of our concerns was the assertion that being a homemaker is the highest calling for a woman. We sisters have dedicated our lives to God and God's people, including the many women whom we have taught and influenced during the past 160 years. These women have made a tremendous difference in the world in their roles as wives and mothers and through their God-given gifts in leadership, scholarship, and their careers."

The Benedictine sisters of Mount St. Scholastica founded a school for girls in Atchinson in the 1860s. It merged with St. Benedict's College in 1971 to form Benedictine College.

Neither Butker nor the Chiefs have commented on the controversy. An online petition calling for the Chiefs to release the kicker had nearly 215,000 signatures as of Sunday morning.

6 in 10 U.S. Catholics are in favor of abortion rights, Pew Research report finds

The NFL, for its part, has distanced itself from Butker's remarks.

"Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity," Jonathan Beane, the NFL's senior VP and chief diversity and inclusion officer told NPR on Thursday. "His views are not those of the NFL as an organization."

Meanwhile, Butker's No. 7 jersey is one of the league's top-sellers , rivaling those of better-known teammates Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.

Butker has been open about his faith. The 28-year-old father of two told the Eternal Word Television Network in 2019 that he grew up Catholic but practiced less in high school and college before rediscovering his belief later in life.

His comments have gotten some support from football fan social media accounts and Christian and conservative media personalities .

A video of his speech posted on Benedictine College's YouTube channel has 1.5 million views.

Rachel Treisman contributed to this story.

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‘Back to Black’ Review: No, No, No

The facts get softened and shuffled for an Amy Winehouse biopic that leaves her perspective at the edges.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

The director of “Back to Black,” Sam Taylor-Johnson, has said repeatedly in interviews that the movie is meant to center Amy Winehouse’s story in her own perspective. That may or may not be meant as implicit criticism of “Amy,” Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning 2015 documentary about the singer, which wove together archival interviews — many damning — with family and friends as well as with Winehouse herself to make the case that everyone was at fault for her untimely demise.

Either way, Taylor-Johnson’s remarks suggest that Winehouse, who in 2011 died at the age of 27 of alcohol poisoning, has been co-opted in the years since her death. “Back to Black,” then, is an effort to tell the story the way she would have.

But, oof. If that was the aim, I’m comfortable saying it failed completely. “Back to Black” has some bright spots. One is Marisa Abela’s performance as Winehouse, which is deeply and lovingly committed, if at times a little distracting. A few sequences work, too, particularly her marathon pub meet-cute with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell), the man whose exceptionally toxic relationship with Winehouse inspired the album for which the movie is named. (Unfortunately there are very few scenes in which we see Winehouse’s songs coming together — usually the best part of a musician biopic.)

“Back to Black” starts with Winehouse expressing that she simply wants people to listen to her music and forget their troubles for a while, and to know who she really was. Then it follows her through her early gigs in Camden pubs, her friendships and her fights with boyfriends. When she meets Fielder-Civil, everything changes — and not for the best. Always a heavy drinker, she gradually becomes addicted to all kinds of substances, in part because he is an addict. When he goes back to his girlfriend, she writes angry songs that become “Back to Black.” When he returns, things get worse.

Yet the facts of the real Winehouse’s life and struggles are impossible to ignore, and some of the movie’s choices, from a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh, seem aimed at rewriting her history without her consent. Fielder-Civil, for instance, has said he instigated Winehouse’s first encounter with heroin, but in “Back to Black” she starts shooting up on her own.

In the meet-cute scene, he introduces her to “Leader of the Pack,” by the Shangri-Las, of whom she claims to have never heard. Winehouse did indeed cite the Shangri-Las as an influence on “Back to Black,” but in interview after interview in “Amy,” musicians and producers extol the breadth and depth of Winehouse’s musical knowledge. Ahmir K. Thompson, also known as Questlove, has said that Winehouse schooled him on jazz, to a level that floored him. It’s not just hard to believe this scene happened; it’s almost insulting to Winehouse, as if she needed Fielder-Civil to educate her.

Or there’s the matter of Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse (played by Eddie Marsan), whom she adored. “Back to Black” depicts him as a kindly if occasionally misguided man who only cared for his daughter’s well-being. The most damning line about him in Winehouse’s lyrics pops up in her most famous song, “Rehab,” in which she gives “my daddy thinks I’m fine” as a reason to stay out of rehab — a line based entirely in reality. In a scene in the movie, Mitch does say she doesn’t need to go to rehab. We never see her perform the song until the night of her Grammy wins, after she has in fact gone to rehab, and so the line just furnishes a rueful laugh for him.

Yet reality suggests dubious action on his part, too — such as the time he showed up in St. Lucia, where his daughter was recuperating, with a camera crew to film a Channel 4 documentary entitled “My Daughter Amy.” This isn’t represented in “Back to Black,” even though it’s part of Winehouse’s story, too.

Artistic license, the mushing and rearranging of facts, is common in biopics, for better or worse. It’s often necessary, since boiling a life down to fit into a two-hour feature film is no easy task. That a movie messes with the historical record a little doesn’t automatically make it bad.

But in “Back to Black” the omissions feel downright weird, as if something is being ignored. I can only speculate on the answer, but the speculation feels strong. Mitch Winehouse is the administrator of his daughter’s estate (and, incidentally, hated “Amy,” telling the filmmakers, “ You should be ashamed of yourselves ”). He has threatened to block a biopic of his daughter in the past, instead signing an agreement in 2018 for an authorized biopic with one of the producers of “Back to Black.”

Given the movie’s light-fingered treatment of some facts around the two most important men in Winehouse’s life, the picture starts to sharpen. “Back to Black” is far from the first biopic that smooths the edges off real people for the Hollywood treatment. But because the movie’s stated aim is to re-center Amy in her own story, it feels gross.

There are other things that feel weird in the movie, the veracity of which I can’t possibly know — Winehouse’s obsession, for instance, with having a baby, and the implication that she self-destructed because she and Fielder-Civil couldn’t conceive. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn’t.

Here’s what did happen: A vibrant, dynamic, abundantly talented woman whose life often didn’t feel much like her own has ended up at the center of a movie where her life, once again, is not her own — where the facts are manipulated to favor the men who arguably did the same at her expense when she was alive. Winehouse may someday get the biopic treatment she deserves. But I have to wonder if it’s even necessary. When she was alive, she did it all on her own, just fine. And we still have the album she called “Back to Black.”

Back to Black Rated R for drug use, language and sexual innuendo. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. In theaters.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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