GLR July-August 2022

FILM

A Poet Who Survived the Great War

T HE NAME Siegfried Sassoon may be known to those who fol low English poetry or have an in terest in the Great War, or who wish to be versed in LGBT culture, but probably not to many others. A new biopic titled Benediction , by gay English director Terence Davies, is the story of Sassoon told as a chronological inquest into the psyche of one of the great war poets of his era. Although Sassoon was a decorated hero on the battlefield, when given time for convalescent leave, he used it to excori ate the conduct of the war in a letter to his commanding offi cer, and he indicated his intention to withdraw from further military duty. He might have been court-martialed and shot, but cooler heads prevailed—despite the confrontational stance taken by Sassoon, played with striking command by Jack

use, and amorous escapades made them equally celebrated and deplored as they partied their way into newspaper gossip. But Sassoon remains conflicted and seeks spiritual redemption in the conformity of a marriage to an amiable young woman aware of his other sexual interests. Later, the aging poet will convert to Catholicism.

A LLEN E LLENZWEIG

BENEDICTION Directed by Terence Davies EMU Films, et al.

Along the way, especially in the film’s first half, director Davies deploys voiceovers of successive war poems read by Jack Lowden, who also brings a beautiful grace and charm to his portrayal of the young Sassoon. Often accompanying this rich lyrical language is haunting black-and-white silent news reel footage showing the grim carnage of trench warfare or the spirited procession of young men marching in formation. These conjunctions convey a tone at once elegiac and bracing as young soldiers march with determination or slog through

Lowden, when he was formally questioned by three military su periors. In the end, Sassoon was sent to a war hospital in Scotland and treated for “shell shock.” His case had by then stirred up con troversy. The higher-ups decided on this less provocative solution to a problem whose public rela tions implications were obvious. So he was given the so-called “talking cure”—regular visits with W.H.R. Rivers, a sympa thetic doctor–therapist who, like Sassoon, was discreetly homo sexual. Their conversation on this point is portrayed as a subtle exchange between two proper gentlemen even as the pair reveal to one another the most conse quential matter of their inner lives. In the film, Ben Daniels as the elegant, older Rivers offers himself to Sassoon as an exam ple of knowing but not tortured

Jeremy Irvine (as Ivor Novello) and Jack Lowden (Siegfried Sassoon) in Benediction .

the mud while Lowden’s voice intones such poems as Sas soon’s “Attack” and Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” When the story moves from the sanitarium to the aftermath of war, Sassoon’s caution in erotic and emotional matters gives way to a stage of sexual discovery among those spoiled youths of society drawing rooms. Here the elegiac quality of the film turns brittle, as Sassoon is taken up by Ivor Novello (played by Jeremy Irvine), a matinee idol, composer of witty stage music, and silent screen star, with whom he has a brief affair. Among the members of this group of superior queer nar

stoicism. Daniels gives a wonderfully sly if brief performance. Terence Davies, who also wrote the screenplay, limits the scope of his film to Sassoon’s life as a poet famous enough after the war to enter the higher echelons of British society. He’s also attractive enough to succumb to repeated seductions by the period’s outrageous male Bright Young Things. These were youth of both sexes whose rebellious style, speech, drug Allen Ellenzweig, a longtime contributor to these pages, is the author of the recently published book George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye (Oxford University Press).

The G & LR

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