Benediction

Benediction is a British-American drama about the poet Siegfried Sassoon, tracing his life from his service in the First World War through his later years. Decorated for bravery at the front, Sassoon returned home and publicly opposed the government's decision to prolong the fighting, a stance that grew out of what he had witnessed in the trenches. His wartime experience also shaped the poetry that established him among the leading war poets of his generation. Admired by aristocrats and by figures from London's literary and theatrical circles, he pursued relationships with several men while struggling to accept his sexuality. Damaged by the war, he looked for a kind of peace in a conventional marriage and in religion.

Terence Davies wrote and directed the film, the fourth of his features listed here, following Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Deep Blue Sea and Sunset Song. Jack Lowden plays the younger Sassoon and Peter Capaldi the older one, with Simon Russell Beale as Robbie Ross, Jeremy Irvine as Ivor Novello, Calam Lynch as Stephen Tennant and Tom Blyth as Glen Byam Shaw among a credited cast of forty-one.

Critics rated the film notably higher than general audiences did, with a critics' score of 7.7 from 153 reviews against 6.6 on IMDb from around 4,500 votes and 6.1 on TMDB from a much smaller sample. It runs 137 minutes.