Benediction (2021)

  This was the Movie Club pick for the week.  I barely got it watched in time.  This whole weekend has fled from me like it owed me money.

Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden) joined the war effort in 1916 like any other young man of his generation only to be profoundly shaped by the horrors of trench warfare.  A gifted poet, he found himself exiled to a convalescent hospital in Scotland because of his vocal opposition to the war.  There, under the care of a sympathetic doctor (Ben Daniels), Siegfried also comes to terms with his own sexuality.  In the inter-war period, Siegfried works his way through the fashionable upper class gay set including actor Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) and model Stephen Tennant (Calum Lynch) before marrying Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips).  

This is half a biopic and half a really annoying reality show on Bravo.  Bitchy, catty, disaffected queens interspersed with archival WWI footage and random full songs.  It is a hot mess.  Skip it and watch Wilde instead.  

Benediction is currently streaming on Hulu.