Benediction

Benediction (2021) is a biographical drama to watch online on iFILM, directed by Terence Davies. Jack Lowden plays the poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon as a young man; Peter Capaldi takes him through old age. Sassoon came back from the trenches in 1917 decorated for his conduct at Mametz Wood — and convinced the war's continuation had no moral basis.

He sent an open letter to his commanding officers refusing to return to service. The army replied with a shell-shock diagnosis and a placement at Craiglockhart War Hospital rather than a court martial — where he met the poet Wilfred Owen. Back in civilian life he moved through London's literary and aristocratic circles, had affairs with men including Ivor Novello and Stephen Tennant, and eventually converted to Catholicism, reaching for something the world he'd known couldn't give him. The film tracks these decades without forcing conclusions.

Davies — whose earlier work includes Distant Voices, Still Lives and Sunset Song — structures the biography around mood and music rather than plot mechanics. The result is less a chronicle than a portrait assembled from memory. Stream Benediction online on iFILM.