(JTA) – “Benediction,” a new biopic of the British anti-war poet Siegfried Sassoon, opens with a Sassoon poem called “Concert Interpretation.” In it, the author describes a British audience’s ...

The problem with most films about writers is that they’re so concerned with biographical data and dramatic comings and goings that there’s no room left for words, which aren’t just an author’s stock ...

Rupert Brooke, Charles Sorley, Julian Grenfell, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, and Edward Thomas have in common at least the fact that they were English poets born sometime between 1875 and 1895 — and ...

The hell where youth and laughter go. A decorated veteran of the Western Front before he turned conscientious objector, Sassoon knew of what he spoke. Sprinkling passages of his poetry over somber ...

Most biopics are thuddingly prosaic: There’s a lot of “this happened, then that happened,” performed by a famous person covering themselves in latex in an attempt to resemble another famous person. In ...

“Benediction,” Terence Davies’ achingly beautiful portrait of the English war poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon, is a movie of acute sadness and intense pleasure. The pleasure and the sadness are ...

One of the finest religious poems of the 20th century is “Lenten Illuminations” by Siegfried Sassoon, written shortly after the poet’s reception into the Church in 1957. In the poem, the poet places ...