Siegfried Sassoon was one of the most successful poets in England in the early twentieth century, marked by his decision to condemn the United Kingdom for continuing to fight in the Great War long after it seemed to have been about liberation. He was also a queer man who needed to be careful about how he lived his life and who knew about his relationships. What sounds like a run of the mill biopic was anything but. We are introduced to young Sassoon, played by Jack Lowden, as he is being sentenced to a psychiatric hospital for his conscientious objection “delusions” to get better and return to the front lines. He not only saw countless fellow infantrymen lose their lives in brutal fashions, but he also lost his younger brother to the conflict, scarring him for life. As he is in the hospital he regularly sees the head doctor, who instead of shaming him for his views actually helps crystallize them, going so far as subletting implying that his queerness (both in sexuality and unconventional opinions) makes him different in a good way, a queerness that the doctor also shares.
We get to see what life is like for the young Sassoon as he navigates upper crust society in the post-Edwardian era and experiences love and heartbreak. First and foremost this is a film about queer love and relationships, both with other men and the world itself. We get a who’s who of queer English royalty from Ivor Novello, the singer and actor played by Jeremy Irvine whom he has a tumultuous affair with that ends with Novello’s inability to be monogamous. We also briefly see writer T.E. Lawrence in a church, but also Glen Byam Shaw an actor and Stephen Tennant an aristocrat. While they aren’t shown on screen we also get mentions of gay luminaries such as Oscar Wilde and the “boy actor” Noel Coward. The way the romances and sex scenes are filmed are quite breath taking. Director Terence Davies, gives the male body and gaze a unique spin. We watch as handsome man after handsome man walk into frame, the camera stops to let the viewer soak them in before turning the focus on another character almost licking their lips in lust.
For some reason, films about art like Portrait of a Lady on Fire or Mr. Turner have just about the most beautiful cinematography, where everything is framed like a still that could be displayed in the Louvre. Films about writing usually have some of the best scripts. This one in particular has word play so cunning that you’re laughing every other line as some barb thrown at someone’s way. You may even need to watch the film with a dictionary as the characters are so eloquent in their insults that most of it might go straight over the viewer’s head (not that it takes away from the performances in the slightest). Unfortunately there is some egregious CGI that really takes one out of the film. Early on Sassoon throws a medal of honour he received into the water and the spinning medal splashing down looks so ridiculous, it could have been from an early 2000’s cheap music video. Several times there was real footage from World War I overlaid on screen to create a double exposure, except it feels like a poorly made student film.
Much like Love & Mercy, where two performers play Brian Wilson at drastically different points in his life, Sassoon is played by not only Jack Lowden, but in his older years by Peter Capaldi, who is best known as one of the incarnations of Dr. Who. Unlike Love & Mercy, where John Cusack and Paul Dano get almost equal screen time, Capaldi only gets a few brief moments throughout the film, and the last little section. When his parts show up, they often hinder the momentum the movie has, as Capaldi’s usual thick Scottish baroque voice is barely adjusted to have an English twang to it. Lowden is so superb in the part you can’t help but wish for Capaldi’s scenes to be over to get back to young Sassoon.
While the early military service and subsequent refusal to fight plays an important role at the start of the film, it doesn’t connect to the larger picture of the movie, which is more interested in showing the many loves of Sassoon’s life. With gorgeous scenes of parties, poetry performances and singing, you can’t help but swoon over the many sumptuous shots that Davies has crafted, as we get to learn a bit more about a great writer from the last century. It’s a flawed film, but an irresistible one nonetheless.
Benediction was seen during the 2021 Vancouver International Film Festival Thank you to the festival for the press pass.
