Benediction

For a film-maker as wonderful as Davies, Benediction is a missed opportunity.

There is no happy-go-lucky ending here, only the sense that an ineffable longing we have, to know and be known, is so precious and rare that most of us never find its fulfillment here on Earth.

Davies is a remarkably empathetic filmmaker, attuned to his characters’ subtlest moods and intent on equally depicting their joys, hardships, and mundane middle grounds.

Davies’s careful craftsmanship and keen sense of melancholy (as opposed to melodrama) keeps the film subtle, but not benign; its portrait of the artist as a broken man gets under your skin.

The recountal is tinged with documentary footage and nigh-experimental scintilla attempting to visualize the stuff of poetry that hint at this being something exceptional from a master's intellect.

Vividly moving.

Transcendent performances and visionary direction make for a numinous final film by Terence Davies.

Often poignant but frequently disjointed, Benediction is a scattered portrait of First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon, juggling themes of homosexuality, war and religion.

Benediction is achingly sad but poignant – like all great art it elicits empathy for the subject and the many, many young men who were lost due to wars out of their control&#59; whether those be on a battlefield or in their personal lives.

With immersive visual poetry, Benediction redefines what a good biopic can be.