The History of Sound

 

Director Oliver Hermanus

Director on the set with actor Paul Mescal

Hermanus, Mescal, and Josh O'Connor

Author and screenwriter Ben Shattuck

writer's studio

THE HISTORY OF SOUND            B+                                                                                  Great Britain  USA  Italy  Sweden  (127 mi)  2025  d: Oliver Hermanus

The history of sound, lost daily.  I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder, the sun the needle, laid on Earth and drawing out the day’s music – the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting.  And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people washing across the Earth like static.                                                                  —The History of Sound, by Ben Shattuck, 2018

Among the better films at making us feel what the characters are feeling onscreen, yet what’s most surprising is how this is communicated — through listening, through singing, and through silences.  Emotionally compelling in a very unorthodox way, an extremely delicate and quiet picture that wanders endlessly, taking many detours along the road before a stunning finale that is simply outstanding, making one realize that the entire film has been about collecting moments and personal experiences, which are simply a reflection of what we were doing at the time, but they are substantially more than that over time, as they become the defining moments in our lives, precious and unsullied, where a collection of small, seemingly insignificant points in time amount to so much more upon reflection, when we’ve had a chance to evaluate how much they mean to us.  Death can be a trigger, as it mercilessly cuts us off from these moments with a brutal decisiveness, where the lingering sadness has decades-long consequences.  We’re so accustomed nowadays to accessing any song at any given moment, it’s easy to forget there was once a time when songs existed only in memory or on paper, passed from generation to generation as oral or written histories.  It’s amazing the power of this picture, which is not for everyone, as it may be too slow, quiet, and introspective for some to actually connect, as no one is making films like this these days due to shifting attention spans, where people who are on their phones all the time may simply not appreciate what it offers, as it requires patience, and represents actual human contact with all that entails, trusting the audience’s imagination and intelligence without over explaining anything, so it’s like a time traveling trip into an old-fashioned past, allowing us to draw our own conclusions.  Made by a gay South African filmmaker, where it must be noted that South Africa is not exactly a juggernaut in the film industry.  Raise your hand anyone if you can name even a single South African filmmaker.  Most cannot.  Cape Town-born Oliver Hermanus is a filmmaker acclaimed for his sophisticated, character-driven films that are thought-provoking, richly textured, and visually striking, exploring themes of identity, repression, sexuality, and the essence of longing.  So this is an unexpected pleasure, as this film is more than the sum of its parts, a poignant reminder of lost love, reminiscent of Brokeback Mountain (2005), where it makes you wonder how do you tap into that same depth of feeling?  Offering a poetic reflection on the ephemeral quality of sound and how our experiences, even the most impactful ones, are constantly fading into the background, leaving only a faint trace behind.  This encourages us to appreciate the present moment and the sounds that surround us, as they are constantly being lost to time, exploring the passing of youth, “I always feel like I’m at the end of something,” and the deep regret of not staying with your first love, examining how the past is often misunderstood and how history can reverberate in our lives.  While many may not agree, perhaps feeling the material is overly constrained, arriving in mostly empty theaters with little fanfare, this is actually one of the better films of the year, transporting us to New England, Rome, and the English Lake District of the UK, where the finale is poetically sublime, with soaring, elegiac orchestral music that plays over the end credits.    

Adapted from a superlative short story by Ben Shattuck, The History of Sound, part of an interconnected anthology of short stories that are an ode to New England, rooted in New England landscapes and culture, where each story has a companion story that contains a revelation about the previous, paired story, winner of the Story Prize Spotlight Award in 2024, with the director claiming he “was drawn to the wisdom of it.”  Shattuck also wrote the screenplay for the film which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025, where it received a nine-minute standing ovation, yet it was among the lowest rated films in competition, Cannes Film Festival 2025 jury grid.  Described by the director as “a love letter to the films of the ‘90’s,” featuring intelligent yet accessible romantic epics, like Robert Redford’s A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT (1992), Edward Zwick’s LEGENDS OF THE FALL (1994), or Anthony Minghella’s THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996), films that he acknowledges “don’t exist anymore,” yet older viewers may appreciate.  This is a story of first love, with an early scene in 1917 before the war setting the stage for what follows, as music student Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal), who discovered he had perfect pitch and music-based synesthesia where he could see colors as a child while growing up on a dirt-poor farm in Kentucky, earns a scholarship to the prestigious New England Conservatory in Boston where he meets fellow student David White (Josh O’Connor) in a crowded pub.  Lionel is seen leaving the table of friends he’s with after hearing the soft voice of someone sitting at the piano, quickly introducing himself, discovering both share a passion for folk music, with Lionel recognizing the song David was singing, which takes him by surprise, as David is a collector of obscure songs, quickly turning the tables by asking Lionel to sing a song that David had never heard of, which turns out to be Silver Dagger, Joan Baez - Silver Dagger (live 1965) YouTube (3:02), immediately falling in love with him right there on the spot, leading to a passionate yet carefully concealed affair, The History of Sound Movie Clip - Singing Love Songs (2025) YouTube (2:11).  There’s never any building tension or suspense about whether or not it might happen, as right from the start we know that this is happening.  Initially we might think this is an Andrew Haigh film, the gay British-born maker of Weekend (2011), 45 Years (2016), Lean On Pete (2017), and 2024 Top Ten List #2 All of Us Strangers, as it has that lustful male stare that leads to gay sex, but this filmmaker is not interested in that, showing nothing sexually, instead expressing the intimacy of the aftermath, content to show the couple snuggling, where he’s fond of filming bare backs, and the many questions asked the morning after, Love Songs Scene | THE HISTORY OF SOUND (2025) Movie ... YouTube (3:52).  Then it veers in a completely different direction, one that few could see coming, becoming, in a sense, a historical road movie, wandering between different spaces and time periods, as it recalls the exploits of Alan Lomax, an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music during the Depression and throughout the 20th century, songs existing in many versions, passed down orally through generations rather than written on paper, sung and written by everyday people, songs that are part of a living culture, where Lomax was the leading expert in the important role of preserving folk music traditions, which he obtained by traveling around the country with his portable recording device and taping obscure artists that represented different geographical regions of the United States, recording songs that might otherwise be lost, much like Béla Bartók did collecting old folk melodies in Hungary, or the chronicling of Polish folk music in Pavel Pawlikowski’s Cold War (Zimna wojna) (2018).  

David is marked by the early loss of his parents, growing up with his uncle in England, but he refuses to speak about the pain, and instead sings a ballad, explaining the song is a story of two lovers lost in the woods on a January night, having run from their homes to meet by an oak tree to then elope.  A blizzard comes, and they can’t find each other.  In the chorus they call each other’s names, but the wind shakes the trees so loudly that they can’t even hear their own voices—so they die alone, huddled under separate trees:

Over snow’d floor two tracks did mark                                                                          One going west, the other east                                                                                    Two still figures at trees’ roots                                                                                      On a dead winter’s night, they never meet.

There is a literary aspect to the film, complete with an eloquent narration that cuts in, which turns out to be the voice of Chris Cooper, an older version of Lionel looking back at his life with a melancholic nostalgia.  This film is only as good as the actors who carry it, and they are both superlative in their roles, Mescal (doing his own singing while evoking a Kentucky accent) from 2023 Top Ten List #7 Aftersun (2022) and 2024 Top Ten List #2 All of Us Strangers, O’Connor from 2024 Top Ten List #5 La Chimera (2024) and Challengers (2024).  It’s surprising the effect the deep past has on the present, as the farther back in time you go, the more contemporary life you have to strip away.  Gone are the cell phones, emails, and cars, trains, lightbulbs, antibiotics, newspapers, and so on, where what it comes down to is two people sitting in a room, exploring their relationship and the feelings they have about each other and themselves.  Yet people from the past, are very much like ourselves in the present, not that distant or far away, as we’re all part of the shared human experience.  What this film does is strip away everything else, and leave it down to these two main characters, following their routines at different periods of their lives, which has a profound effect on viewers sitting in a theater, as the emotional sweep of their lives leaves an impact.  It’s almost a musical, based upon the massive amount of songs that are sung, but these are academics intent on recording the indigenous songs passed down by families through generations, preserving their authenticity before being forgotten in the dustbin of history, taking us on a journey we might otherwise miss.  For a queer love story, this is an unexpected way of going about it, as it perversely denies our expectations of what we think a gay romance could be, as the grand sweeping gestures combining societal repression and latent desire of Brokeback Mountain are nowhere to be seen, and anyone expecting to find it will be disappointed, as this is not that film, where the lack of explicit sex has drawn criticism, but the filmmaker is instead far more concerned with the artistic connection and the private, almost sacred interiority of desire as we follow these two young lovers through America’s hidden regions and eventually into Europe for much of the atmospheric expanse of the movie.  Though never as easygoing with people as David, Lionel has a deeper inner resilience, featuring plenty of hiking and backpacking together through Maine, following Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, collecting songs from local people that they record on wax cylinders while camping under the stars, becoming a masterclass on understated emotions.  What’s missing are the stories of the voices they are hearing, whether it be Irish immigrants or descendants of black slaves, such as Thankful Mary Swain (Briana Middleton) on Malaga Island singing Here in the Vineyard YouTube (3:37) as their small, biracial community is about to be forcibly evicted by authorities ("Malaga, revisited: On a Casco Bay island, a shameful incident in Maine's history comes to light"), yet those lives remain invisible, even as we see them onscreen.  Equally mystifying is how Lionel is blind even to the needs of his own family, who he’ll leave in an instant, irrespective of the consequences, as the music he hears in his head seems to simply be plucked from any given moment.  Away from the rest of the world, there’s nothing outwardly that suggests these men are gay, as they’re extremely careful about not revealing too much about themselves, even to each other, as they part with awkward difficulty, unable to convey how they really feel about each other, and end up spending far less time together than they do apart, each filled with suppressed longing.           

“My father said it was a gift from God that I could see music,” opines an older Lionel played by a wistful Chris Cooper in 1980, delivering a searing emotional monologue in the film’s final scenes, as he transforms Lionel’s ear for sound and music into a kaleidoscope of internalized emotions.  What’s clear about this film is that it’s seen through Lionel’s eyes, the emotional center of the picture, almost like an Éric Rohmer film, as the David we see is how Lionel remembers him, a young kid going off to war, coming back without much to say about it, filled with hidden secrets that he only later learns about, where the trek through the woods to collect songs one summer unites them for a brief moment in time before returning to their normal lives in the fall, as they’re off again in pursuit of different careers, Lionel to Rome and then to Oxford as an established professor of music, while David has a position at Bowdoin College in Maine, with Lionel staying in touch through letters, but eventually stops as he receives no response.  He pursues a few relationships, a young European protégé in Rome and a girl in Oxford, Clarissa (Emma Canning), who brings him home to meet her parents, but in each case he leaves unexpectedly on bad terms, consumed by an aching loneliness with memories of David swirling in his head, always viewed as that special someone who got away, perhaps more than he could contain, yet David’s absence is especially noticeable.  While there are brief glimpses of his life in rural Kentucky, with its vast landscapes, beautifully shot by Paul Schrader’s regular cinematographer Alexander Dynan, it’s not really a place he would call home, as there’s nothing left there for him after his parents die.  With a musical score composed by Oliver Coates, who also composed the music for 2023 Top Ten List #7 Aftersun, arrangements by Sam Amidon, perhaps the most riveting musical moment, purely by the contrast it offers to the wall-to-wall folk music, happens when a brief snippet of Joy Division’s Atmosphere (2010 Remaster) YouTube (4:09) can be heard, like the voice of David calling out for him, “Don’t walk away, in silence,” beckoning him to return back to America, which he does, but things have changed more than he anticipated, as what he discovers adds to the layers of mystery that envelop this film, like low-lying fog, where it’s hard to see through the mist.  It’s beautifully rendered, a quiet portrait of love steeped in regret, filled with all the yearning, joy, and pain that love entails, keeping an emotional distance from its own heart, where few films offer the gravitas of this film, with a grown-up Lionel acknowledging he was “never happier than when collecting songs,” painfully evoking a time when gays living in the closet was the norm, where you couldn’t just come out and acknowledge that, though Lionel remembers “I didn’t experience the guilt that some men in my time would have.  I just loved David and I didn’t think much beyond that.”  Painfully reflecting on his own interior life, where the sting of David’s haunting absence only makes the heartache grow larger over time, having difficulty emotionally connecting with the world around him, the film is a brutal reminder of the past, as so much has simply vanished over time, including a huge part of himself, enveloped by tender memories that disappear all too quickly as well, playing out like a ghost story, urging viewers to connect with the small beauties that exist everywhere.

2022 Top Ten List #6 Benediction

Writer/director Terence Davies

Davies on the set with Kate Phillips and Jack Lowden

Siegfried Sassoon

Sassoon with close friend Robert Hanmer

shooting on the set

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BENEDICTION                    A-                                                                                               Great Britain  USA  (137 mi)  2021  ‘Scope  d: Terence Davies

Alone he staggered on until he found                                                                                         Dawn’s ghost that filtered down a shafted stair                                                                             To the dazed, muttering creatures underground                                                                               Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.                                                                             At last, with sweat and horror in his hair,                                                                                    He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,                                                                  Unloading hell behind him step by step.

—excerpt from The Rear-Guard, by Siegfried Sassoon, written on the Hindenburg Line, April 1917, siegfried sassoon - The War Poems - Project Gutenberg

This has a towering, epic feel about it, something of a gay anthem, coming in the latter stages of the director’s career when history, vintage photographs, poetry, cinema, and Catholicism, which is painfully prominent, all merge together, incorporating his own queer history, telling the story of English poet, writer, and soldier Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden), decorated for bravery on the Western Front, officer with the Royal Welch Fusiliers and winner of the Military Cross, becoming one of the most influential and historically important poets of the First World War.  Angry at the futility of war, having lost his younger brother at Gallipoli, his compassionate anti-war poems differed from the jingoism and sentimentality of other war poets, more political and more edgy, instead writing about the horror and brutality of trench warfare and the tragic waste of human life, like ordering young men to charge against machine guns that literally mow them down, always remaining connected to those frontline soldiers while blisteringly satirizing the generals, politicians, and clergymen for their incompetence and blind support of the war.  Public reaction was fierce, some complaining the poet displayed little patriotism, while others found his shockingly realistic depiction of war to be too extreme, accentuating the graphic detail, but he eloquently captured the feeling of trench warfare, where the accumulated war deaths in WWI were simply staggering, First World War: fatalities per country 1914-1918 - Statista, with soldiers dying by the millions, shown in a lyrical stream-of-consciousness montage of black and white photographs that are simply striking, set to the starkly unusual choice of music of (Ghost) Riders In The Sky - Vaughn Monroe (a #1 record) - YouTube (3:01), with WWI metaphorically supplanting the Wild West, quoting Wilfred Owen’s opening line “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?” from Anthem for Doomed Youth, Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen | Poetry Foundation, or underlined by an impassioned reading of Sassoon’s poetry that reflects the weariness of British soldiers in a war that never seems to end.  He wrote a letter to his commanding officer after throwing his Military Cross medal into the river, declining to return to duty because he believed the war was being deliberately prolonged by those who had the power to end it, A Soldier’s Declaration, Sassoon's Protest Statement, which was published in newspapers and read aloud in the House of Commons, causing an extreme degree of embarrassment for the British military and very nearly got him court-martialed, BENEDICTION (2022) movie clip: "I simply cannot remain silent..." YouTube (1:27), instead, after intervention from important figures, including British poet and historical novelist Robert Graves, his commanding officer in the Fusiliers, he was sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland for recuperation and treated for shell shock, a condition he did not have.  It was there he met his treating psychiatrist, Dr. W. H. R. Rivers (Ben Daniels), the first in Britain to use “talking therapy,” discovering they both share a “love that dare not speak its name,” an Oscar Wilde reference to homosexuality, one of the first gay men he became close to, while also meeting fellow poet Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson), who was the editor of The Hydra, a literary journal produced by the patients.  Immediately striking up a friendship, they each shared a profound respect for each other’s enormous talent, each believing the other was the superior poet, providing a brief solace in their lives, developing a homoerotic friendship that was never consummated, seen dancing the tango together, cheek-to-cheek, but they kept in contact through correspondence, even as Owen was quickly sent back to the front lines, dying just a week before armistice was declared at the age of 25, with the war taking perhaps the only man he ever really loved.  Owen’s work inspired Benjamin Britten to write his War Requiem, also Derek Jarman’s 1989 film by the same name, while his loss, added to Sassoon’s younger brother, and the collective loss of the millions of war dead affected him greatly, haunted by the cries of “the muffled dead,” losing so much at such an early age, never really coming to terms with the psychological damage of unfathomable trauma, all but confirming his worst fears. 

Davies lyrically examined his own childhood in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992), created a passionate ode to his hometown, Of Time and the City (2008), explored the literary passages of Edith Wharton in THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (2000), Terence Rattigan in The Deep Blue Sea (2012), Lewis Grassic Gibbon in 2016 Top Ten List #7 Sunset Song, and American poet Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion (2017), and while this fails to meet the poetic depth of his earlier films, the dramatization still feels like an elegiac transformation onto the screen, creating haunting moments that simply linger in the air, including beautifully constructed sequences shot by Nicola Daley, working with the director for the first time, that eloquently express Davies as a superb conceptual artist.  Bringing a theatrical quality to the production, with Sassoon returning home after the war, Christmas is laced with an anguished memory of all that has just transpired, leaving one exhausted and emotionally spent, Benediction Movie Clip - Reliving the Past (2022) | Movieclips Coming Soon YouTube (1:19), while also searching for the sublime in a portrait of cherry blossoms set to exquisitely delicate music, Butterworth: A Shropshire Lad - Loveliest of trees - YouTube (3:27).  Brilliantly written by Davies, in tune with the sensitivity of each character, the wit and elocution of the dialogue is among the director’s best, each word precisely chosen, initially established through the tender exchanges between doctor and patient, both proper English gentlemen, developing an immediate rapport through their erudite language, but growing more intellectually testy as he enters the upper echelons of British society after the war, developing an Oscar Wilde flair for the dramatic in a series of romantic affairs and encounters with rich socialites, reciting one of his own poems, Benediction: Blaze Of Lights (HD CLIP) Jack Lowden, Tom Blyth WWI Movie YouTube (1:41), while indulging in parties and extravaganzas in the Gatsby-like era of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s - Historic UK where gay and lesbian relationships were commonly accepted.  In this richly decadent atmosphere he meets Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine), a matinee idol, composer of witty stage music, and openly gay silent screen star in Hitchock’s atmospheric murder mystery drenched in fog, The Lodger (1927), who sings his own deliciously witty novelty song, And Her Mother Came Too (Harold Lloyd) - YouTube (1:53), before scandalously ditching his boyfriend and taking the arm of Sassoon to commence yet another romantic fling.  This same song was sung by Jeremy Northam when playing Novello in Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001), aptly reflecting the times in which it was written, when risqué tongue-in-cheek comedy was all the rage.  The screen is a bouquet of gay narcissists flaunting their flamboyant effeminance, literally snarling at one another with their claws out, including actor and theater director Glen Byam Shaw (Tom Blyth), coupled with Novello before Sassoon came onto the scene, and Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch), an impetuous and beguiling prize with a flair for the rich and glamorous, something of a social climber habitually looking at himself in the mirror while continually exhibiting an insouciant flair.  All handsome and divinely dressed, at times this resembles a chic costume drama where the winner takes the prize, like when they meet Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips), the well-connected and wealthy daughter of a Chief Justice who dabbled in painting and writing poetry, quickly grabbing Sassoon when the occasion suits her, BENEDICTION - Frist Clip For Terence Davies’ Siegfried Sassoon Biopic Starring Jack Lowden #TIFF2021 YouTube (2:16).  Described by Sassoon’s mother as the “pretty boys,” they all interchange with one another in relationships at some point in time, trying one another out like some kind of social experiment, where the freedom they are looking for resembles the free love movement from the 60’s, while hovering over them is art critic Robbie Ross (Simon Russell Beale), an elder gay statesman who bravely defended Oscar Wilde (who was imprisoned for his sexuality) from scurrilous attacks and helped protect his literary legacy.  Left out of the film is the affair Sassoon had with Prince Philipp of Hesse, a German aristocrat who later joined the Nazi Party, serving as Hitler’s art collector.  The fleetingness of these Bohème relationships mirror the cattiness of the characters and the ferocity of the sharp barbs intended to stab their prey, exhibiting a stifling self-centerdness of people utterly caught up in themselves, where you wonder why anyone would stick around, Benediction: The Fight (HD CLIP) Jack Lowden, Tom Blyth WWI Movie YouTube (2:19), but it reflects the underlying anxiety of being gay during a time when it was outlawed, something that has also plagued the director throughout his life, scurrying to the hallowed realms of the Catholic Church in hopes of salvation, only to end up bitterly disappointed. 

Rather than telling Sassoon’s story in a biographical sense, Davies approaches his life subjectively, accentuating the accompanying feelings expressed through his poems, where his films are often memory plays, using associative editing and an evocative use of music, offering reflections of looking back at one’s life with a sense of regret.  The length of the film feels rightly deserved in this film, as poetry needs space to breathe, where the silences and pauses need to be felt.  By scouring Sassoon’s diaries, the actor Jack Lowden quickly realized he was playing a conglomeration of Sassoon mixed with the director’s own personal feelings, merging into a starkly authoritative depiction of growing up gay in the moral straightjacket of the British empire (homosexuality was outlawed until 1967, with a new law passed just weeks after Sassoon’s death), leading to a tortuously repressed existence.  This is the director’s most openly gay film, though he maintains the self-loathing factor associated with his own homosexuality ('Being gay has ruined my life' – The Irish Times), while the reverence Sassoon feels for the community of brothers lost in the war has a nearly homoerotic connotation, as they represent the hopes and dreams of a future generation that never see the light of day, expressing so much love and admiration for them, as they carried with them his own aspirations for a better world and a better life.  When they died, something within him died as well.  While there is frivolity in youth, with economic privilege granting them sexual freedoms, Sassoon’s life evolves into unusual sadness, hiding behind an angry veneer of an almost sneering honesty, though his mother (Geraldine James) reminds him “it’s more humane to be kind than honest.”  Filled with a gravity of emotions that suggests an endlessly combustible inner turmoil, Sassoon is driven back into the closet where he leads an overly repressed shadow life, searching for redemption through societal respectability and the protected sanctity of marriage, and ultimately religion, never really enunciating his disappointment, instead hoping for the sought-after salvation.  Thinking this may come in the form of Hester Gatty, at age 47 Sassoon marries her, twenty years younger than him, hoping to have a child together, then somewhat later he converts to Catholicism, where the great promise of a more stabilized life turns into an unmitigated disaster.  One of the most startling images is an age transformation in a held shot, as Jack Lowden morphs into a much older Peter Capaldi, thoroughly embittered and dejected at the abysmal state of his life, supremely angry at the world and disgusted with himself, living in a sterile relationship with an unhappily discouraged partner, where the alluring Kate Phillips transforms into a frumpy Gemma Jones, losing all sense of her former sensuality, looking positively dour, neither one having anything to say to each other, with Gatty eventually departing for Scotland, driven to unending despair by a relentless onslaught of verbal abuse from an uncaring husband.  Yet for abject cruelty, it would be hard to top a scene with the now older Stephen Tennant (Anton Lesser), as it appears there are simply no feelings left, Benediction (2022) Clip | Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi YouTube (1:30).  Their grown-up son George (Richard Goulding) looks nothing like either one of them, blending into the landscape with a thoroughly average appearance, where nothing about him stands out, apparently playing referee between his two parents, acting as a go-between until they separate, trying to get his father to utter anything, as he goes into catatonic states of aloof despondency, sitting for hours without saying a word.  When he finally gets his father to go to the theater, thinking this would have a positive effect on his outlook, they go to the overly cheery Anthony Newley British comedy Stop the World – I Want to Get Off, a show that ends with the song What Kind of Fool Am I?, yet what Davies chooses to show is the cheesy sentiment of Typically English (Live) - YouTube (3:42), which Sassoon must have found dreadful.  The film opens with Sassoon’s A Soldier’s Declaration and closes with Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled, Disabled by Wilfred Owen | Poetry Foundation, which is read while a young Sassoon sits on a bench and witnesses a legless war veteran in a wheelchair being taken outside a medical facility and simply forgotten, leaving him drowning in an abject state of horror, where the title takes on an elegiac significance, merging into a final wordless sequence that is as bleak as it is enthralling, endlessly holding onto a face, where you may recall a similar heart-wrenching finale, Visions of Gideon- Sufjan Stevens (Call Me By Your Name Soundtrack) High Quality YouTube (4:42), though this shakes the very core of one’s being, set to a Vaughan Williams theme, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis - YouTube (16:35), where Sassoon has simply lost all faith in the world, leaving him heartbroken and dismally sad, seemingly frozen in time, transformed into an agonizing state of morose despair.