During the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) we covered a variety of films and had the pleasure of interviewing Jack Lowden and director Terence Davies on their new film called Benediction. It tells the story of Siegfried Sassoon and how PTSD, war, poetry, and more affected his life.
Hosts: Monica Gleberman and Victoria Dupuis
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Movie Bio:
Writer-director Terence Davies was last at the Festival with the Emily Dickenson biopic A Quiet Passion. A companion to its predecessor, Davies’ latest is a sumptuous portrait of 20th-century English poet Siegfried Sassoon, and the first time the filmmaker has explicitly portrayed love and desire between men.
Benediction’s form is a lyrical stream of consciousness, following associations of memory rather than chronology. Davies crafts Sassoon’s experience of the First World War in layers of heroism (he was decorated for bravery on the Western Front), loss, and unfathomable trauma.