Did we miss this: Terrence Davies' Benediction

Shot with a classy mahogany sheen, Terence Davies salutes Siegfried Sassoon’s poetry but focuses his lens on a postwar socialite lifestyle, middle-class and deeply melancholic. @JALowden masterfully captures his defiant attitude and his quiet anguish

I have loved a couple of Terence Davies' films ("The Long Day Closes" is a masterpiece) but this disappointed me. As I watched I remembered why I hate biopics- too much exposition and explaining the introduction of famous names. The best parts were the reading of the poems and the documentary footage of WWI was horrific and memorable. In contrast the actual movie seemed basic BBC historical film and weirdly cramped (because of finances?). But maybe that was the point. I was moved by the ending which fulfilled the theme of Sassoon's failure and entrapment in the past.

Not sure how anyone could have been attracted to the way Ivor Novello and Stephen Tennant were portrayed- both as such evil, shallow queens. Also, I didn't understand the gun shot sound in the section before Edith Sitwell is mentioned. Right after you see Sassoon bandaged up in the hospital and no explanation is made- did he shoot himself? Was there a flashback?

Overall the movie is a bit of a miss, but I am going to search out more on Stephen Tennant and reread Wilfred Owen.

I felt deeply immersed in it but couldn’t always follow—as in the hospital scene r1 references, and in the way Siegfried’s relationship with Stephen begins.

Out now as digital release.

Tom Blyth is in it. He's the lead in the show Billy the Kid and he had a minor role in The Gilded Age's first season.

Caught it on the big screen last weekend; I found it to be a fascinating look at a certain kind of gay life between the world wars. It’s ultimately very moving. As always with Davies, you have to meet him on his wavelength; he’s a historian as much as he’s a filmmaker.

I am in love with this movie, have seen it three times at this point. War poetry has always been my favourite kind, it just demolishes me and helps with my depression as it puts it into proper perspective. Sobbed all the way through on the first watch. All that senseless loss of life...

The editing is something I found disorienting at first until I realised I was watching memories, at which point it started making perfect sense. My favourite part is how those images of the war violently snap you out of any fuzzy feelings you might have after a delightful scene. You are forced to confront the horrors of the war even when it's most inconvenient; we're not allowed the comfort of looking away, as most of us do in our daily life.

Controversially, my least favourite part is the long shot on the face at the very end. I understand the point of it (he said he was a composed logical person earlier on in the psych ward), but the movie was running so long already and I was feeling all of the emotions without his breakdown just fine. Before CMBYN, I would have loved that shot, but now I'm just kinda over them.

Jack Lowden is just astonishing, my favourite male film performance in years.

I loved it—have loved the War Poets since College and also love Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy

Fancy Terence Davies discussed on Datalounge! Clutch my pearls!!

What are our other Davies faves? For me it’s The Deep Blue Sea, followed by The House Of Mirth and Sunset Song.

This is available on OnDemand now. Just watched it last night. Beautiful film. Lowden was excellent. Also really liked Ben Daniels. The guys playing Ivor Novello and Stephen Tennant were a bit broad, though. Was Novello really that bitchy and mean in real life? I know he was a player but never heard that he was a really nasty person

‘Masterpiece’ is bandied about far too often, but The Long Day Closes is a masterpiece. Full of unexpressed desire and yearning and love. It’s one of my favourite films.

I remember watching it for the first time, and during the last lingering shot of the moon I felt that I had to clutch my chest, as if my soul was about to explode (Mary!, I know). Little else has moved me so much.

And after it ended my boyfriend at the time rolled his eyes and said ‘What the FUCK was that?’. I didn’t end the relationship because of his inability to appreciate Terrence Davies, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a contributing factor.

Sounds as if your ex lucked out, R10. You’re way too high-maintenance.

Jeremy Irvine said experiences with older "predatory" actors help inspire his performance as Ivor Novello. Wonder which actors he was talking about

^ He did work with Kevin Spacey...

I’ve loved the War Poets since I read them as a freshman in college in a course taught by the great scholar Sam Haynes. I thought Davies’ film was moving and captured the feel of the period and the poetry.

You've all missed mentioning Davies' 2008 film Of Time and the City

Not a benediction. More of a loving eulogy to a time and place that's both gone and still there: Liverpool.

The Scouser friend who suggested it (and Davies, too) was right: we leave the place we love and then spend a lifetime trying to regain it.

I came across Mark Kermode's video about his favourite Terrence Davies movies from six years ago and fell instantly in love with this glorious shot in the preview image. I really must check it out one of these days, but I'm afraid it'll lessen the power of Benediction for me; same thing that happened after I did an Almodóvar binge. I just cannot keep the movies from the same auteur separate in my brain, I start judging them as a part of the whole and it takes away from their magic.

Terrence Davies becoming the Peter Greenway of his generation (which I suppose says something critical about the current generation?). A Quiet Passion and now this, pulling apart narrative into odd montages, voiceovers, mysterious time cuts. Why was Sassoon suddently in the hospital with a bloody face? Well, he was shot in the head in the war... but how would anyone know that? Davies works with personal references and private understandings.... he seeks to understand, not to be understood.

I'd wished that Sassoon and Owen had a nude love scene - the energy between them was so intense. But apparently they didn't fuck in real life. The bright young things didn't seem that bright... the actor playing David Tennant seemed like he was coloring between the lines, going through his queer paces without much interest. Tennant and Sassoon were each others' principal life romances, but I got none of that from this movie.

But the point of the movie was NOT to tell a story of gay love, or gay subculture among the boho class of between-war-England... rather a life hollowed out by the horror of war. A war unlike any other. The actor playing the older Sassoon was tasked to show the waste of a life, the horror firmly lodged in him and waiting for death. Not sure he did a good job - he just seemed like a fusty, annoying old man. The ECU scene at the end of him staring at the camera with multiple expressions bubbling on his face seemed.... uncomfortable, not in any useful way. Director could have helped him a bit.

But all in all, well worth the time. One of the better directors working in English now. He's in his mid-70s... wonder how many films he has left.

^^ Greenaway... which I looked up and realized they are almost the same age. I thought Greenaway was long dead. My bad.

I loved it. The actor who played Ivor Novello was excellent, as was Jack Lowden. Ivor was such a nasty fucking cunt, especially in the put the keys where you found them scene.

I just watched it. I thought the lead actor was wonderful. Sassoon's deep romances with the shallowest of men (as portrayed in the film, at least) made me question his character, though R20's "a life hollowed out by the horror of war" would explain it.

The film gets a couple of little things wrong, but it was absorbing and moving in spots. I was disappointed in the casting of the Ivor Novello role; the actor was nothing like the real Novello in appearance but has one of those meaty rat faces like Taylor Lautner.

If anyone who saw this also watched The Windsors, did you spot Richard Goulding as Sassoon's son? He also played Prince Harry.

I loved it, but I've heard from people who know a lot about the period and the people involved that, for instance, Novello and Tennant were not the empty-headed mean little bitches that Benediction would have them be.

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