Benediction (2022) Capsule Review

What Terence Davies’ final film Benediction, about the English anti-war poet Siegfried Sassoon (played by Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi at separate points in his life, both of them moving through something darkly tortured) reminds me most of is Kurosawa’s Dreams, which should speak for the film’s poetic quality, and not just in a late-period sense (although there is the implication of something of a semi-biography being explored for the director himself) but especially in form: there is a staggering blend of classical, almost handmade effects that cross between dimensional planes, as well as an unbelievable hand at dissolving transitions that weave between historical warscape footage of WW1 and the gothic environments of Sassoon’s life. Unlike Dreams, though, Benediction is not episodic- it never retreats or folds inward, just dives from one realm to the next until different lives- Siegfried the poet, Siegfried the warrior, Siegfried the lover, Siegfried the witness- begin to leak out of one body. Davies, and editor Alex Mackie, find a way of depicting that in cinematic terms.