Benediction (2022)
Director: Terence Davies
In my formative years of childhood, I often wondered what it meant to be strong and have others follow your instructions. With my parents’ teachings, I assumed it came with age. Just as I was told to respect my elders, I assumed power and strength came automatically as I grew up. I thought maybe my deeds would carry me through. The Universe would balance off everything in the end. How naive? Bad things happen to good people and vice versa. There is no fair game.
My bubble finally burst. Nobody gave me two hoots about my age. Everybody was trying to dominate the other with the power of articulation or wealth. Eskimos would be sold ice, and drinking water could be sold to unassuming naive dwellers of the tropics. As if nobody caught it when Evian spelt backwards is naive!
Then I caught people selling the idea that time is cyclical and birth is repetitive. This birth is the punishment for the past and a test-bed for the future. Bunkum, I say. Any kind of lesson would require the student to know his mistakes and make amends. How can I improve if I have no absolute knowledge of past karmic ratings? It is kind of self-defeating as the students just repeat the past again and again. The worse thing is he is just thrown into different dens at different birth and expects to do the ‘right’ thing.
As a child also, I realised that by killing more soldiers, one can assert his point of view. The bigger one’s army or the deadlier one’s ammunition is, the better the chance to carry his will. It is not about truth always prevails. God does not decide anything, but the minions made in His image do.
In the meantime, all the collateral damage that both sides are sacrifices made to defend the arbitrary piece of geography or insignia. What a crude way to prove a point? Whilst all these injustices go unnoticed, who is to take notes for the Day of Judgement, if ever there is one. Not to forget the pain, the loss of appendages, property, dignity and sanity; who will be paying for this?
This anti-war movie is about a British post-WW1 poet, Sigfried Sassoon, whose gallant deeds won him the Military Cross but went strictly ant-war afterwards. He defied a direct order but averted being court-marshalled by pleading shell-shocked (that is PSTD in those days). He started mixing with the artistic crowd then (TS Eliot is mentioned somewhere) and established himself as an anti-war post. In keeping with the times, to appease the woke generation, the filmmakers had to insert explicit gay scenes to tick the boxes.
Director: Terence Davies
My bubble finally burst. Nobody gave me two hoots about my age. Everybody was trying to dominate the other with the power of articulation or wealth. Eskimos would be sold ice, and drinking water could be sold to unassuming naive dwellers of the tropics. As if nobody caught it when Evian spelt backwards is naive!
Then I caught people selling the idea that time is cyclical and birth is repetitive. This birth is the punishment for the past and a test-bed for the future. Bunkum, I say. Any kind of lesson would require the student to know his mistakes and make amends. How can I improve if I have no absolute knowledge of past karmic ratings? It is kind of self-defeating as the students just repeat the past again and again. The worse thing is he is just thrown into different dens at different birth and expects to do the ‘right’ thing.
As a child also, I realised that by killing more soldiers, one can assert his point of view. The bigger one’s army or the deadlier one’s ammunition is, the better the chance to carry his will. It is not about truth always prevails. God does not decide anything, but the minions made in His image do.
In the meantime, all the collateral damage that both sides are sacrifices made to defend the arbitrary piece of geography or insignia. What a crude way to prove a point? Whilst all these injustices go unnoticed, who is to take notes for the Day of Judgement, if ever there is one. Not to forget the pain, the loss of appendages, property, dignity and sanity; who will be paying for this?
This anti-war movie is about a British post-WW1 poet, Sigfried Sassoon, whose gallant deeds won him the Military Cross but went strictly ant-war afterwards. He defied a direct order but averted being court-marshalled by pleading shell-shocked (that is PSTD in those days). He started mixing with the artistic crowd then (TS Eliot is mentioned somewhere) and established himself as an anti-war post. In keeping with the times, to appease the woke generation, the filmmakers had to insert explicit gay scenes to tick the boxes.
Disabled
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the parkVoices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,Voices of play and pleasure after day,Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.About this time Town used to swing so gayWhen glow-lamps budded in the light-blue treesAnd girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,—In the old times, before he threw away his knees.Now he will never feel again how slimGirls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,All of them touch him like some queer disease.There was an artist silly for his face,For it was younger than his youth, last year.Now he is old; his back will never brace;He’s lost his colour very far from here,Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race,And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,After the matches carried shoulder-high.It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,He thought he’d better join. He wonders why . . .Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts.That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.Germans he scarcely thought of; and no fearsOf Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hiltsFor daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.Only a solemn man who brought him fruitsThanked him; and then inquired about his soul.Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,And do what things the rules consider wise,And take whatever pity they may dole.To-night he noticed how the women’s eyesPassed from him to the strong men that were whole.How cold and late it is! Why don’t they comeAnd put him into bed? Why don’t they come?
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