BENEDICTION

Jack Lowden is perfectly cast as the younger Sassoon, a war hero who received a Military Cross in July 1916 for “conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy’s trenches” on the western front.

...offering some of the sharpest, nimblest dialogue of writer-director Terence Davies’ estimable career.

Terence Davies explores the tragic and complex life of World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon in this elegantly moving biopic.

The poem may be somewhat dated today in its conceptualism, but still: Listen, and weep.

...feels like a crowbarring open of the soul.

...Davies’ handling of the material is so exquisite that the overbearing melancholy becomes, in the end, a work of poetry.