Terence Davies' Benediction

Taking a break Holy Saturday from my Parsifal and Matthäus-Passion fest, I opted for a movie I've been putting off for some time: Terence Davies' Benediction. Typical of Davies' work, Benediction is complex, richly poetic and filled with symbolism that penetrates on many levels.  Davies' has created my favorite kind of film: a challenge. It is not an easy film to love, or to sit through.  Many have not been able to do either of those.

Based on the adult life of British War Poet, Siegfried Sassoon, Davies weaves myriad elements of powerful imagery, superb acting, characters who endear, amuse, entertain, and repulse, some of them simultaneously, others possessing perhaps only one of those qualities. Chief among them is the subject himself, Sassoon who deftly displays them all. As Sassoon, we are treated to perhaps Jack Lowden's finest performance to date. Peter Capaldi is also excellent as the poet in his later years.   

I believe the opening minutes of Benediction to be among the most powerful, wrenching anti-war statements committed to film.  In a voiceover, we hear the letter Sassoon wrote to the authorities, fully prepared to be court martialed and possibly face the firing squad, as we are barraged by an assault of images of young soldiers fighting, mangled, being blown up, unrelievedly depicting the horrors and brutality of war. I was so awestruck and affected by this brief sequence, I had to copy Sassoon's words, and share them here.

"I am writing you this private letter with the greatest possible regret. I must inform you, that it is my intention to refuse to perform any further military duties. I am doing this as a protest against the policy of the government in prolonging the war by failing to state their conditions for peace. I have written a statement of my reasons, of which I enclose a copy.

I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war, should have been made so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that had this been done the objects that actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong the sufferings for ends, which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception, which is being practised upon them. Also, I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home, regard the continuance of agonies, which they do not share, and which they have not enough imagination to realize."

In addition to Sassoon's measured words he eloquently expresses the literal banalities of war, which had me examining its meaning in terms both poetic and factual. It's a masterful thing Davies has done here in so short a period of time on film.  Having made this point early on, the filmmaker has this effect pop up again, less frequently, but underlining its potency.  It is, ultimately, I believe, the sole reason for this film's being, even when the narrative appears to have been abandoned, which occurs about midway through.  It has not.  More on that later.

Due to the intervention of Robbie, a prominent family friend (Simon Russel Beale), Sassoon never gets that day in court, and instead is whisked off to Scotland to be rehabilitated at a military hospital. He's treated brusquely by the commander (a nice cameo from Julian Sands), with great compassion by his therapist, (a wonderful turn by Ben Daniels), and with awe by fellow soldier and the young poet, Wilfred Owen (a gloriously moving portrayal by Matthew Tennyson).  Though Owen reveres the older soldier, Sassoon, who initially looked down on him, realizes who the better poet is, and quite possibly, the better man. Davies points up the undeniable attraction between the pair through scenes of controlled restraint offering subdued elegance as romance. That restraint and elegance becomes unbearable poignancy when Owen is called back to the front and the two must part. 

 All of this morphs into what almost feels like another movie, and the war story seems (as hinted above) abandoned.  In this regard, I could not help but see Benediction in terms of a symphony, this center section acting as its scherzo.   

Like a scherzo, humor punctuates this movement; broad, witty, uncomfortable. We witness the lives of prominent homosexual men living in a sort of secretive flamboyance, ever aware of the risks and limits of what will be tolerated and what could get them imprisoned . . . or killed.  We also get glimpses of celebrity, even Edith Sitwell in Facade with music by William Walton. 

I admit some difficulty with this section.  I wasn't particularly liking it - or any of the characters, coming as it did on the heels of all that preceded it, and the melancholic mood I was enjoying.  At first I thought myself uncomfortable with those characters, snide and quick to bitch, and on the surface at least seemingly nothing but petty.  I quickly realized that flamboyance was, at least in part, worn as armor, shielding . . . defending themselves from a world that would not allow them to be who they truly were. Also, I'd grown to care for Sassoon's character so much, that to see him, squirming, desperate, and almost masochistically settling for companionship and love, was unsettling in the extreme. Again, Davies peels away the layers of a character to reveal so many facets it's alarming to realize how many levels there are to each of us. 

The scherzo segues perfectly into the third movement of Davies' symphony, with the awkward, platonic courtship and marriage of Sassoon and his bride Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips, then later, Gemma Jones), each knowing what they are getting into, but going ahead anyway.  Perhaps they were filled with the same hope I was that there could be a happy end to all of this.  Life doesn't work that way though, does it?  

Though essentially linear, Davies transcends timely narratives weaving together the young, melancholic Sassoon, with the bitter old version of himself, and in at least one sequence we see the two merge. The effect is beautiful.  It is also arresting and haunting. 

Benediction's final movement ties all of its many themes together, again, through the use of war.  We get the bitter humor, the poignancy, the anger, the betrayal, the longing and ultimately the acceptance, but we don't arrive there easily. Like a great composer, Davies has saved the best and most powerful moment for the end of this amazing symphonic film, and I, for one, could not have been more quietly devastated by it.  I sense we humans will never not be at war for very long; history has shown it is not in our nature, and that war shapes everything around us and always has. Benediction makes that abundantly clear.