Interview: Director Terence Davies on poetry, ‘Benediction’ as a story of redemption and that aching final shot

One of the great figures of British cinema, Terence Davies has shown no signs of slowing down in his seventies. Moving from his autobiographical films like Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes in the 80s and 90s to the early 00s literary adaptations The House of Mirth and The Deep Blue Sea, Davies has now found a niche in making biopics of poets. After 2016’s A Quiet Passion, which starred Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson, his most recent film Benediction takes on the life and loves of Siegfried Sassoon, a gay British poet who was sent to a psychiatric facility due to his anti-war views after fighting in WWI. 

After premiering to rave reviews at last year’s Toronto International Film festival, Benediction, starring Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi as younger and older versions of Sassoon, is finally opening in cinemas just in time for Pride month. I spoke with Davies about the connections between Siegfried and Emily, how he found the film’s central theme, and what went into creating that devastating final shot.

Dan Bayer: It’s interesting to watch this film, knowing that your last film, A Quiet Passion, was also about a poet, albeit an American poet in a different century. I have to ask, though: Is this a phase? Is it a coincidence? Is there a connection there or not?

Terence Davies: Well, it may be a phase, but I’m getting help, I hope. I loved Emily Dickinson. I think she’s the greatest of the 19th-century American poets. I just think she’s fabulous. I think she was never given the acclaim that she should have had. With Siegfried Sassoon, I mean he survived when the other two poets were killed, and that gave them a kind of sainthood. He’s never presented quite as good as they are, and that’s unfair because I think he’s a great poet. I’m drawn to people who are on the outside because I am. I’m an outsider. I’m an observer of life rather than a participant, and that can make life difficult. It certainly made it difficult for Emily, and it certainly made it difficult for Siegfried, despite the fact that he was of that upper class that very privileged gay men who didn’t get caught by the law. I’m drawn, I suppose, to people who, like me, are trying to find someone to say you’re worthwhile. I don’t think they ever found that, and I certainly haven’t.

DB: I can relate to that as well. As a gay man of a certain age, did you feel very connected to Siegfried Sassoon before you started working on this film?

TD: Well, I like the poetry. Obviously, I was drawn to the poetry. I only found out later that he was gay, and that’s got to be explored, and it’s gone to be shown. Full on, you can’t get away from that, but there were things in his life that I mean… Why on earth did he want to become a Catholic for God’s sake? I mean I was brought up a Catholic. It’s a miserable religion. You just feel guilty all the time. When you make something, you don’t really know what you’ve done until after you finish it. When it was finished, I thought, “Actually, it’s about redemption. It’s wanting to be redeemed.” I think that’s what he felt, and that’s what I feel. I think that’s what was deep within me because I want to be redeemed, but, of course, I won’t be because you can’t find it from other people, art or religion. You can’t. You have to find it yourself. And I think that’s true of Emily Dickinson. No one ever said to her, “You’re a great poet.” No one ever said it. I mean and how can you not read, “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me,” and not be floored by it?

DB: I would completely agree. That’s an interesting synergy that you found after you finished the project. Do you find that has happened throughout your career that you find the main through line or the point of something only after you’ve finished?

TD: Yes. I think that’s true. There’s a wonderful recording of one of Vaughn Williams’ symphonies. And he said at the end of it, “I don’t know if I like it, but it’s what I meant.” That’s very telling. You only find out afterwards. I mean on Long Day Closes, I mean one of my many nieces, who are lovely, said, “I didn’t realize you were so lonely as a child.” As a child, I didn’t feel lonely. I didn’t, but I was and still am very lonely. You think, “God!” Or someone has an interpretation of part of something, and you think, “Oh, I’d never thought of that, but that’s the joy of it, that other people get meaning in a different way. That’s what the best of art can do, that it can be interpreted in any number of ways. That’s its joy. And also condemned in a way, “Your films are slow and boring,” and there’s nothing you can do about it really. I don’t earn enough money to have a hitman to rub them out, so I just have to shut up.

DB: That’s fair enough! Watching Benediction, and I also felt this with A Quiet Passion too to an extent, but certainly more in this film, that it is as much about Siegfried Sassoon as it is about the world in which he lived. I’m wondering when you were making this, when you were writing it, and then when you were directing the film, did you feel that it was important for you to present a portrait of a certain generation of British men in addition to just Siegfried Sassoon, or did that sort of come later?

TD: Well, that really came with the writing. What was important was to understand that within that social circle, a very privileged social circle, there is that feeling of not being part of it. I think Emily felt the same for different reasons, and I felt the same. I’ve always felt the same. It’s when it’s revealed to yourself that you are that, that’s when it’s hard to bear. I don’t think Emily ever accepted that. The closer she comes to it, she says, “We become the very thing we dread, and I have become embittered.” That’s me. That’s what has happened to me. Where with Siegfried, he says, “I’d like to be called Siegfried Sassoon,” which is why his son – and this is my opinion – the greatest argument against damehoods and knighthoods is just look at the people who’ve got them! But he’s wanting validation, saying, “You are important.” And that’s what damehoods and knighthoods do, and they’re utterly meaningless. They don’t mean a damn thing, although if I were a damehood, I might be tempted.

DB: I certainly would be. Although speaking of damehood, I think this film is also a very sneaky double biography with also the character of Ivor Novello playing such a large part in this. He and Siegfried had a relationship, but how did you choose to center the film on that relationship?

TD: Well, because it was a very, very bad relationship. I mean Siegfried Sassoon destroyed his own diaries for those three years. Ivor Novello was sexually venal, he didn’t care whether he hurt people. He was very cruel, like a lot of gay men are, like a lot of heterosexual men are. He didn’t think twice about being duplicitous, but, of course, that was probably part of the attraction. The tragedy, I think, with Siegfried, is he’s attracted to the wrong people, and the only person he really loves is Wilfred Owen, and that’s never consummated. It’s never even said how he feels about him. That’s his tragedy. I think it’s true a lot of the gay men are fancying someone who doesn’t fanc, you. or someone fancying you and you don’t fancy them. Perhaps that’s the way it is the world over, once sex enters the equation, then you really are into shark-filled waters.

DB: Indeed. I think that is still true of many gay men today that they don’t think about other people. They are sort of sexually venal, like Ivor Novello, and then there are others like Sassoon, who feel that… there’s that idea that we accept the love we deserve, and I think that is also a through line throughout this film, and that in the end, he is searching for the love of something higher because he believes he deserves that.

TD: Yes. And it’s not there. It’s not there. And that’s hard to… I don’t think he actually ever admits that, but I think subconsciously he knows it’s not there, hence the search for it.

DB: Yes, indeed. As a writer writing about other writers in this case, how do you manage to blend your own voice with the voice of the writer you’re writing about? Because that was something that I thought was very beautifully done, in both A Quiet Passion and in this.

TD: Well, I have a very imitative ear, because when I grew up, there was the radio. You only had the radio at home, and it was only the BBC. The home service began with the shipping forecast. I didn’t understand it at all, but I thought it was fabulous, and it was said by these wonderful… people had the most gorgeous voices, “Fair Isle, climate is 40s. Winds facing south to southeast. Moderate to poor visibility.” Isn’t it fabulous? I thought it was orgasmic.

There’s that there, but also I’ve been influenced by a lot of wonderful British films of the comedy of the early ’50s and American films, like A Letter Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve, which have got the most fabulous dialog. I mean they’re just fabulous. “Go over and see that man. He’s in television. Do you have to audition for television? Television is nothing but auditions.” So one grew up with that and realizing many years later how fabulous Jean Hagen is in Singin’ in the Rain. Those things become part of you, and you want to try and make it as good as that.

But also, it’s very beguiling to be made to laugh. People are beguiled, but it’s lovely to be made to laugh, especially when it’s a clever remark. So I didn’t want them all to be somber. There’s nothing more depressing than being somber. They were sharp and witty, and in the case of Emily Dickinson, I mean there was that hermetically sealed house where she read everything, and the number of subjects she studied at Holyoke is breathtaking.

I mean just as this hermetically sealed world of Siegfried Sassoon is. They’re all very well-read. Many of them may not be very, very intelligent, but at least, they are part of that cultural sphere. Sometimes they were part of that sphere, and they didn’t know that they were, which is why Robbie Ross says to Lady Colefax, “Ragtime. You really ought to be ashamed of yourself.” She goes, “Well, Mr. Novello plays it so well, it’s almost music.”

DB: One of the things that has stuck out to me and nearly everyone that I have spoken to who’s seen Benediction, everyone seems very drawn to that last shot of the film, that last shot of Jack Lowden. I know you talked about sort of figuring out what the point of the movie was after. Did you always know that this was how you were going to end the film or did that come later?

TD: No. What happened was after the closing shot on him – which was held for three minutes and twenty seconds, which is a very long time – there was a sequence around the Menin Gate and the gravestones. My wonderful editor, my wonderful producer said, “You don’t need it.” I thought, “Okay. Let’s see how it works.” We did it without them. I said, “You’re right. That’s where we end it.” So originally, it was not like that, but you can tell when something is right. We’ve got to end it now. Anything else is superfluous.

DB: It’s beautiful. How did you direct Jack? What did you tell him in order to get that out of him? It’s a magnificent, brilliant moment of screen acting.

TD: I said, “You’re thinking about the rest of your life, and you’re thinking about Wilfred,” which is the only time we hear the Wilfred Owen poem. “You’re thinking about all of your life that has gone by and is yet to come.” I said, “We’re going to do it in one take,” and we did it in one take. The reciprocal shot is on this amputee lad, who’s not an actor, who gave the most wonderful performance. I said, “At some point, would you draw this little blanket over your knees and blow in your hands?” And he did. It pierced my heart, especially those closing lines, which are, “How cold and late it is. Why don’t they come and put him into bed? Why don’t they come?” Like the end of, say, the Tchaikovsky 6th, it ends quietly. I just said, “Look at him. You just look at him.” I said to Ian Beach who was the amputee, “You’ve no idea how many actors would give a million quid for what you’ve just done.”

DB: It’s true! Well, it is a beautiful moment that ends a beautiful film. Thank you. In talking about all that has come in your life, all that is to come, we wish you all the best in your next cinematic endeavor.

TD: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Benediction is currently playing in select theaters from Roadside Attractions.