Feature films by the British writer-director Terence Davies “don’t come along very often”, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail, but when they do, they are “usually worth watching”, even if they demand a “certain perseverance”. Benediction, about the First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon, slots into that category: “it is pretty hard going, but has its rewards”. Sassoon, who died in 1967 at the age of 80, is played as a young man by Jack Lowden, and in his embittered older age by Peter Capaldi. Davies “powerfully” punctuates the tale of his life with original footage from the War, “of shell bursts over the trenches and cheerful Tommies showing their gap-toothed smiles to the camera as they march to their doom”. The sections set after the War drag a bit – and Capaldi fails to quash “a faint Scottish twang” – but there’s plenty here to move and enlighten.
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