Avis Metacritic

Terence Davies’s film is a rhapsodic portrayal of an upper-crust milieu in which words are wielded like weapons by people who might otherwise be pariahs.

This is a film that trembles with a need for redemption that never comes, and the urgency of that search is palpable enough that you can feel it first-hand, even if Benediction is never particularly clear about the nature of the redemption it’s hoping to find.

Benediction is not an easy experience and some of the caustic, brittle dialogue scenes with Sassoon’s celebrity acquaintances are grating – yet deliberately so. The sadness is overwhelming.

The sheer depth of Sassoon's personal misery feels like a brutally unfashionable thing for a contemporary film to confront, but Davies, who’s never given a fig about fashion, confronts it head on.

A benediction is a prayer for divine help. For any lover of beautifully crafted cinema with real emotional charge, Davies’s latest will feel a lot like an answer.

The dialogue is quietly scathing, and the production values are sumptuous. But Davies seems most interested in Sassoon as a symbol of hemmed-in Englishness. As a character, he remains poetically opaque.

The comedy in Benediction is like a spoonful of sugar before Davies brings in the medicine.

This biographical drama, grounded in the anguished poetry of its protagonist, is hushed and decorous to a fault. But it does eventually wind its way to a profoundly affecting conclusion.

It’s an elegant piece of filmmaking, if a little too decorous at times.

Despite Davis’ lyrical direction, the obvious gaps in the screenplay provide too many holes for what strives to be a definitive portrait of an exceptional talent.