1917: Another Reminder That War Is Hell

In the tradition of all great war movies, 1917 is a brutal watch. The fact that it is shot and edited so that the entire movie enfolds as one single, unbroken take, means that it is even more brutal than usual. It's a marvelous conceit to get the point across, but as an audience member, it is an unrelenting reminder of the horrors of World War I.

Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay star as Lance Corporals Tom Blake and Will Schofield. Stationed in northern France in April 1917, they are given a mission to carry a letter across enemy lines to the 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, who are currently headed into a trap. They think the Germans are in retreat and are planning to attack them, but instead, these 1600 British soldiers are headed straight for an ambush unless Blake and Schofield can get to them before the morning and call off the attack. As if the stakes couldn't be higher, Blake's older brother is serving in the 2nd Battalion, so he has an added incentive to ensure he can call off this attack in time. 

That's all the plot you need to know. What follows is a nail-biting two hours as you follow these men on a perilous journey across no man's land, dodging planes, snipers, rats, bombs, and all manner of horrors in their dogged determination to get this letter to their fellow soldiers on the front line. It is visceral and claustrophobic - at the very outset, Schofield injures his hand on some barbed wire, and before he can even wrap up his hand in some gauze, he falls over and plunges his hand into the body of a dead, decomposing solider. There are rats in the trenches, everyone is covered in mud, wounds are festering, bodies are indiscriminately piled up on battlefields. You are only focused on the journey of these two men, but around them, the bloody business of war keeps carrying on and it is barbaric and sickening. 

Director Sam Mendes (who co-wrote this film based on stories he heard from his grandfather who served in WWI) has done a brilliant job of capturing both the humanity of war in his two central characters, as well as the utter inhumanity of it all as you watch them make their way through trenches, battlefields, and ruins. Cinematographer extraordinaire Roger Deakins certainly deserves his sixteenth Oscar nomination for making the one-take trick feel so effortless and granting so much urgency to the piece (kudos to editor Lee Smith are also needed for seamlessly blending these shots together). The use of natural light in this movie is extraordinary and further brings home the incongruity of war in the midst of a peaceful sunrise and the sounds of birds chirping in the woods. And production designer Dennis Gassner certainly had his hands full. In fact, throughout the movie, I was struck with how much activity was happening in the periphery. Hundreds of extras are milling about, there are so many props littered everywhere, and even though you are focused on the movie's central mission, it would mean nothing without the bleak atmosphere and palpable distress emanating from everything else taking place on the screen. 

1917 is a cinematic tour-de-force, an example of every single department coming together to create an extraordinary movie that captures one of the most brutal periods in human history. The plot is very Hollywood, but at no point does this film shy away from the horror and pointlessness of war and the toll it takes on soldiers and civilians. It is stark and unflinching, and given current geopolitical events, yet another much-needed reminder that war should always be a last resort.