Regeneration

Jonathan Pryce - Dr. William Rivers
James Wilby - Siegfried Sassoon
Jonny Lee Miller - Billy Prior
Stuart Bunce - Wilfred Owen
Tanya Allen - Sarah
David Hayman - Dr. Bryce
Dougray Scott - Robert Graves
John Neville - Dr. Yealland
Paul Young - Dr. Brock
Alastair Galbraith - Campbell
Eileen Nicholas - Miss Crowe
Julian Fellowes - Timmons
David Robb - Dr. McIntyre
Kevin McKidd - Callan

Made under the aegis of BBC Films, Regeneration fictionalises a fateful encounter between the First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon, who has been institutionalised in an attempt to undermine his public disapproval of the war and young poet Wilfred Owen, who with support from Sassoon, starts to write his great-war poems. Regeneration is a powerful and superbly acted period piece directed by Gillies MacKinnon from Pat Barker’s compassionate and intelligent novel. Boasting good performances from the top-drawer cast, Regeneration poignantly conveys the horrors of war.

Set in Scotland’s Craiglockhart military hospital during World War I, eminent Freudian psychiatrist Dr. William Rivers (Jonathan Pryce) is charged with treating the neuroses inflicted on traumatised victims of shell shock, only to send them back into active service at the front. His own ethics are called into question however, when renowned poet and decorated soldier Siegfried Sassoon (James Wilby) is declared mentally ill for making a public anti-war statement. Rivers is charged with convincing Sassoon to renounce his stand and return him to the front. Before long Sassoon befriends budding young poet Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce), and encourages him in his own anti-war poetry. Fellow patient, Billy Prior (Jonny Lee Miller) is struck dumb and numb by the horrors of trench warfare but finds solace and romance with a local munitions-worker, Sarah. Meanwhile, Dr. Rivers begins to question his role in rehabilitating patients and whether his task is to merely make sane men mad enough to go back to the trenches.