Observer by Rex Reed

Beautifully designed and photographed, sensitively written and directed by England’s acclaimed Terence Davies, and impeccably acted by a distinguished cast that turns life into art, Benediction is one gorgeous motion picture.

Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang

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 inextricable, which seems fitting, given how closely aesthetic bliss and moral despair were entwined in Sassoon’s own art.

Slashfilm by Barry Levitt

Benediction" is true to its title, offering up a blessing — not to the Church, rather, but to those whose lives were never able to be lived to the fullest. The film is more than a beautifully performed, masterfully directed piece of entertainment. It transcends, offering hope to any person yearning for more. It is in equal turns lively, devastating, funny, hopeful, and heartbreaking.

San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

Benediction is an awesome combination of wildness and control. Davies is out there all by himself, speaking a cinematic language that is his own and that has little to do with plays or literature.

Little White Lies by Adam Woodward

Owen wrote several other poems about the horrors of war before his untimely death in 1920, and there is one which Davies does not feature here whose title nonetheless captures the mournful spirit of his film. It’s called ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’.

The A.V. Club by Jordan Hoffman

There’s nothing about this film that is uplifting, but Davies’ handling of the material is so exquisite that the overbearing melancholy becomes, in the end, a work of poetry.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Bilge Ebiri

To call Benediction a biopic would be giving biopics a bit too much credit. They don’t deserve Benediction.

TheWrap by Alonso Duralde

The act of writing has tended to be flagrantly non-cinematic, but with these last two films, Davies proves that the internal life of the mind can indeed be explored and portrayed in a visual medium. With every scene a stanza, Benediction is a lyrical triumph.

The New Yorker by Richard Brody

The film brings the past to life with a vividness and an immediacy that seem wrenched from Davies’s very soul.

Slant Magazine by Keith Uhlich

Terence Davies’s film is a rhapsodic portrayal of an upper-crust milieu in which words are wielded like weapons by people who might otherwise be pariahs.

IndieWire by David Ehrlich

This is a film that trembles with a need for redemption that never comes, and the urgency of that search is palpable enough that you can feel it first-hand, even if Benediction is never particularly clear about the nature of the redemption it’s hoping to find.

Time Out by Phil de Semlyen

A benediction is a prayer for divine help. For any lover of beautifully crafted cinema with real emotional charge, Davies’s latest will feel a lot like an answer.

The Telegraph by Tim Robey

The sheer depth of Sassoon's personal misery feels like a brutally unfashionable thing for a contemporary film to confront, but Davies, who’s never given a fig about fashion, confronts it head on.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

Benediction is not an easy experience and some of the caustic, brittle dialogue scenes with Sassoon’s celebrity acquaintances are grating – yet deliberately so. The sadness is overwhelming.

The Film Stage by C.J. Prince

The comedy in Benediction is like a spoonful of sugar before Davies brings in the medicine.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Kate Taylor

The dialogue is quietly scathing, and the production values are sumptuous. But Davies seems most interested in Sassoon as a symbol of hemmed-in Englishness. As a character, he remains poetically opaque.

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

It’s an elegant piece of filmmaking, if a little too decorous at times.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

This biographical drama, grounded in the anguished poetry of its protagonist, is hushed and decorous to a fault. But it does eventually wind its way to a profoundly affecting conclusion.

The Playlist by Gregory Ellwood

Despite Davis’ lyrical direction, the obvious gaps in the screenplay provide too many holes for what strives to be a definitive portrait of an exceptional talent.