Benediction
Description
Terence Davies separates man from myth in his masterly recreation of acclaimed English poet Siegfried Sassoon’s life. Battles still rage when his impassioned antiwar verse leads to the decorated WWI hero’s commitment to a psychiatric hospital. Rejoining society in the early 1920s, Sassoon falls in with London’s Bright Young Things and into affairs with composer Ivor Novello and other men before marrying, fathering a son, and converting to Catholicism. Rather than present the story sequentially, Davies ingeniously shifts between eras, presenting a life often in contradiction and conversation with itself. With the same sort of restlessness, Davies brilliantly uses archival footage, gleefully catty dialogue, and the moving poetry of Sassoon and contemporary Wilfred Owen to mine the complex emotional territory of his subject. US Premiere
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Liverpool native Terence Davies worked as a shipping clerk and accountant for a decade before attending Coventry Drama School and then the National Film School. He began his career with the autobiographical “Terence Davies Trilogy” (Festival 1984) of shorts, and two similarly personal features, Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (Festival 1993). Among his other films are The House of Mirth (2000), Of Time and the City (2008), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), and A Quiet Passion (2016).
Trailer
Film Details
LanguageEnglish
Year2021
Runtime137
CountryUK
DirectorTerence Davies
ProducerMichael Elliott
Executive ProducerPaul Ashton, Margarethe Baillou, Norman Merry, Lizzie Francke, Rose Garnett, Jim Mooney, John Taylor, Walli Ullah, Jack Lowden, Peter Hampden
WriterTerence Davies
EditorAlex Mackie
CinematographerNicola Daley
MusicBenjamin Woodgates
CastJack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Gemma Jones
Print SourceRoadside Attractionsinfo@roadsideattractions.comhttp://www.roadsideattractions.com
Closed CaptionsClosed captions are not available for this screening.
Audio DescriptionAudio description is not available for this screening.
American Sign Language (ASL) InterpretationAmerican Sign Language (ASL) interpretation is not currently scheduled for this event. For more information about ASL interpretation at our events, e-mail ADA@SFFilm.org.
