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
Language English
Year 2021
Premiere US
Runtime 137
Country UK
Director Terence Davies
Executive Producer Paul Ashton, Margarethe Baillou, Norman Merry, Lizzie Francke, Rose Garnett, Jim Mooney, John Taylor, Walli Ullah, Jack Lowden, Peter Hampden
Producer Michael Elliott
Writer Terence Davies
Editor Alex Mackie
Cinematographer Nicola Daley
Music Benjamin Woodgates
Cast Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi, Gemma Jones
Print Source Roadside Attractionsinfo@roadsideattractions.comhttp://www.roadsideattractions.com
Closed Captions Closed captions are not available for this screening.
Audio Description Audio description is not available for this screening.
American Sign Language (ASL) Interpretation American 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.
