I read that you were drawn to the story of Siegfried Sassoon because he is an outsider, and you consider yourself an outsider. What is it about the outsider that makes them such an interesting subject for a film such as this?
Because, in a way, if you are an outsider, you don’t really participate in life. There’s part of you which is always secret and is always watching, and you don’t know that’s happening to you.
I didn’t know when it started to happen to me as a child. I thought that everyone felt like that. Even in moments of utter happiness, I knew as a child that it was crazy, and I think that you become an observer as a protection because sometimes life is hard. How do you bear happiness and loss and nonfulfillment and joy?
That’s why I’m drawn to people like him. Like I would be drawn to Emily Dickinson [with 2016’s “A Quiet Passion”] for the same reason. I’m drawn to Anton Bruckner’s music for exactly the same reason. I feel on the outside I’ve never been a participant in life. I’m far too conventional. I’m far too afraid to do anything that is remotely dangerous.
So apart from Sassoon’s poems, what other sources did you look to when writing the script for “Benediction?”
Well, I had no idea of the kind of life he had led. I [read] three massive biographies, and he went everywhere. He knew everybody and it was just, “What on earth? Where do I start?” Which is why “Benediction” took six years to get to the screen.
I had to read all those biographies. I think, what do I respond to? What did I think I can actually make of it? Obviously, the fact that he was one of the Great War poets through the three Great War poets that we produced in this country.
He was gay, although he was very privileged, those privileged gays were never sentenced or sent to prison. A lot of them got married, which was quite usual at that time. Very naively for both the men and the women then. The thing that really shocked me was that he became a Catholic. I think, “Why on earth would you want to become a Catholic, for God’s sake?”
I grew up as a Catholic and all it instills in you is guilt because it tells you that you’ve got to be pure and forward indeed. Well, how can you be? Even saints can’t do that. So you always fail, and therefore you always have to confess.
I think Jewish people and Catholics really know what guilt is. We really are experts on guilt because it’s kind of put into our souls.
Guilt plays a major part in the overall mood of this film. One of the integral parts, for example, is how the horrors of war haunts its survivors, but the film notably never shows or recreates any war scenes. What was the reason behind this particular choice?
Two. One practical, we had only 5 million pounds to make the film. So you can’t reproduce what it was like in the trenches. Even if you’ve got billions and billions, you can’t recreate what it was like. When you see that war footage, it’s so powerful and so monstrous and beautiful.
I’d always said, “We’ve got to use war footage,” because you just can’t compete with that. It’s so powerful and so moving. So I’d always wanted that.
But I say, on a very practical financial basis, there would be no way we could have recreated the trenches. You can’t just recreate one trench and have soldiers that look a bit dirty. It really doesn’t work.
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