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It wasn’t changed until ’67, so there was that constant tension of feeling like a criminal even though you hadn’t done anything, and that’s an awful feeling. “When I left school, being gay was a criminal offence. “I suppose I warmed to Sassoon because I know what it’s like to feel within society, but feeling that you’ve got to protect yourself with some kind of a carapace,” Davies explains. It wasn’t long before he warmed to the war poet whose life continues to fascinate. He came to Sassoon’s poetry in a similar way – he recited one of his poems at drama school. Of the 19th century poets in America, she’s the greatest for me.” “What drew me to Emily Dickinson and her poetry was that many, many years ago on a Sunday morning, Granada did a half hour programme that had two 15 minute documentaries in them, and one of them was Emily Dickinson, and it was Claire Bloom reading her poetry – ‘Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me’ – I was drawn to the fact that she wrote and wrote despite the fact that she was only ever published in a provincial newspaper and never gained the acclaim that she deserved. “Even though I came from a large family, I’ve always felt like an outsider looking in on life, not a participant,” Davies says. That’s what drew him to A Quiet Passion, his film about Emily Dickinson. It’s stories like these that Davies is drawn to – he’s always felt like an outsider himself. I said all along, we have to have war footage.”īecause of his experience at war, and because of his sexuality, Sassoon was something of an outsider. As soon as you see it, you know it’s literally and utterly true, and it’s powerful. It’s beautiful and horrific at the same time. “I’ve always had an interest in it, but even if you had an unlimited budget, you cannot recreate what it was like on the trenches – you just can’t, and when you see that footage, it’s so powerful. “There’s something so horrific about the First World War, and it changed the world completely,” Davies says. The film also incorporates imagery showing some of the devastating injuries soldiers sustained in the trenches.
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Instead we get historic footage from the war. (Emu Films)īenediction handles that chapter of Sassoon’s life artfully – there are no big budget sequences in the trenches.
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The war hung over him for his entire life. He was decorated for his bravery on the western front, but he was ultimately admitted to a psychiatric hospital. That horror has been encapsulated in his poetry. It’s not hard to see how Sassoon became a somewhat bitter, angry man – much of his life was defined by the turmoil he experienced after fighting in the First World War. I don’t think he did it deliberately, but it’s what do you do when you’ve made a mistake? Sometimes you take it out on the person you shouldn’t take it out on.” You’ve only got to look at photographs of Hester when she’s young and she looks exquisite – I mean, just exquisite – and you see her in her fifties and she’s in despair. “It wasn’t a happy marriage and I don’t think he got on with his son very well either. Ultimately, Sassoon and Gatty “drifted” into marriage. I think they were genuinely naive – she actually did say, ‘I’ve spoken to Stephen Tennant and I know all I need to know,’ which is touching on the one hand but it’s very naive on the other.”
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“In those days, it was sort of this idea that the love of a good woman will cure you. “I think they were both naive,” Davies says of Sassoon and Gatty. In Benediction, Davies explores the tragedy behind such a life. Many LGBTQ+ people will relate to that experience. While Sassoon was one of the most prominent gay men of his generation, he ultimately married Hester Gatty and had a child, leaving his queerness behind. The sex is incidental.” Benediction explores the tragedy of gay life in Sassoon’s era “The point of that scene is not that he’s having sex, but that he’s betrayed Glen Byam Shaw. “With sex scenes, people have got body make up on, they’ve all been to the gym, there’s all this panting and no one ever gets a cramp – no one ever farts!” Davies says. He’s not particularly enamoured by the general handling of sex in big-budge studio fare. Davies was surprised – and a little annoyed – when somebody told him the sex scene in the film is “not very good”.