Kate Phillips and Jack Lowden in 'Benediction.' Laurence Cendrowicz/Roadside Attractions With considerable skill, Davies tries to weave these together with various transitional devices - musical, visual, verbal - but the sections don’t cohere. Tonally, the war years clash with the luxe campiness of his postwar London love affairs, which in turn clash with the astringency of his later life. The various dissonances Sassoon’s life contained are no small part of the challenge Davies faces. Vaughan Williams’s “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” is used to shattering effect to accompany an enactment of Wilfred Owen’s classic anti-war poem “Disabled.” Its use here runs a rather startling gamut, from Ivor Novello show tunes to “Ghost Riders in the Sky” (an uncharacteristically maladroit selection) to an a cappella “Silent Night,” sung in German, over shots of a snow-covered battlefield. It’s the visual equivalent of a musical transposition, and music matters a great deal to Davies. He shows Lowden sitting in a rural church, the camera pans over the interior, and returns to find Capaldi. Davies uses an inspired device to join the actors’ performances.
