1917 (2019): War is Hell

1917 is a remarkable new movie about a couple of British foot soldiers in April 1917, who are plucked from the hum-drum obscurity of life in the trenches of World War I France and plopped into an extraordinarily gut-wrenching adventure. It is a brilliant piece of filmmaking and a story that I found thrilling and captivating. It is certainly one of the best movies of 2019 (albeit released throughout most of the USA in January 2020). It has been nominated for ten Academy Awards, including best picture, director, cinematography and screenplay.

Before I talk about my impressions of the picture and what makes 1917 worth seeing, it might be clarifying to mention what the film is not. It is not a typical war movie. It is not, for example, a film about a major battle like, for example, Dunkirk (2017) (about the stunning rescue of 330,000 British troops from the beaches of France in the early days of the Second World War) or The Longest Day (1962) (about the massive1944 Allied “D-Day” invasion of Normandy which brought the Allies’ armies back to France). Nor is it about a heroic or celebrated war hero, as in Sergeant York (1941) (about the great American hero of the First World War) or Patton (1970) (about the bigger than life American World War II general).

1917 also makes no attempt to provide historical context for the “War to End All Wars”. The film offers no point of view, critical or otherwise, about that war.  There is no manifest antiwar sentiment here, unlike, say, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) or Paths of Glory (1957); nor a glorification of war or combat such as in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) or, arguably, Black Hawk Down (2001). In some ways, 1917’s plot resembles the one in Stephen Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998), about a squad’s mission to rescue a soldier behind enemy lines against nearly impossible odds, although 1917 eschews the grandiosity of that film’s big, bold D-Day reenactment.

The set-up for 1917’s story has our two young protagonists, Lance Corporals Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Will Schofield (George MacKay), charged with the task of delivering written orders to Colonel MacKenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch), an aggressive commander of a forward battalion, to “stand down” from his plans to attack what he believes to be fleeing German troops. Wire communications between HQ and MacKenzie have been severed, so Tom and Will must cut through no-man’s land to hand deliver the orders.  The problem is that HQ has aerial reconnaissance showing that the German retreat is actually a strategic maneuver setting up an ambush.  If MacKenzie attacks, his 1600 men will be massacred. This likely would include Tom’s older brother Joe, which is why Tom has been selected as a messenger.

So, what 1917 delivers is Tom and Will’s harrowing and riveting quest to traverse the six or seven miles to MacKenzie’s line before the attack gets under way. Just a couple of ordinary lads trying their damnedest to follow their orders and do their soldierly duty, hoping to save the life of Tom’s brother and the rest of MacKenzie’s regiment, as well as themselves – all the while facing threats and circumstances that would challenge the likes of Indiana Jones or James Bond.

Speaking of Bond, director and co-writer Sam Mendes certainly knows how to deliver cinematic thrills and excitement – his last two features being the 007 adventures Spectre (2015) and Skyfall (2012). Previous films included American Beauty in 1999 and The Road to Perdition in 2002, so you could say he’s well rounded. Here he has managed to tell a story that unfolds in what appears to be one continuous tracking shot virtually from start to finish. In other words, it’s as if the entire picture, or at least very substantial stretches of it, was shot in one incredibly long take – with the cameras staying with Will and Tom without a break throughout their long, fraught, danger-filled journey. The editing, if any, is largely invisible.

This brilliant, audacious strategy is beautifully realized. Aside from demonstrating the technical  virtuosity of Mendes and his DP, what it does is to lock our attention tightly onto these Tommies, to the point where we almost feel like we’re the ones running the gauntlet to get to their destination. Thus bonded with characters, we watch as they scramble through endless trenches: their own British ones, crowded with young soldiers - idle and bored in one case, nervously preparing to go over the top in another;  across the nightmare landscape of no man’s land – in and out of giant shell craters, amongst random, fetid, obscenely strewn corpses, past bombed out relics of farmhouses, and through the wreckage of a war-destroyed village.

Throughout, the cinematography by cinema maestro Roger Deakins – whose work includes too many great films to mention here, but for example Sid and Nancy (1986), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996) and eight or nine other Coen Brothers pictures, A Beautiful Mind ((2001), Skyfall (2012) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – is simply striking.  This guy somehow makes even a devastated world look dramatically beautiful, even as we simultaneously register it as horrific and sad.  The music by Thomas Newman - cousin of Randy, son of film composer Alfred Newman, and the most nominated composer (14 times) never to have actually won an Oscar – is pretty much perfect: by turns hauntingly spare or bright and urgent or richly melancholy, as befits various situations.

The acting is fine and evocative. There are small but crucial parts by British luminaries like Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and others; but for me the key to the film’s hold on the audience are its two principals, Chapman and MacKay, especially MacKay. The two start out as more or less collegial buddies – relatively at ease together, although they hardly know one another. They’ve got a bit of a Laurel and Hardy look as a couple, one dark and a little chunky, the other taller and leaner with a facial expression somewhere between non-committal and surprised. Not that they are trying to be funny. This is the world’s worst war and they are in the trenches.  As the story unfolds, the burden (of the quest and of holding our interest)  falls more on Will [MacKay], and he is up to the challenge. It’s not so much that we get to know Will very well; he is more everyman than a finely etched character.  Yet, in both the rare moments of repose and the more frequent, ever-changing scenes of jeopardy, his face reflects an emotional universality that’s very relatable. There’s a touching moment with a woman and a baby where you can see him, moment by moment, slowly casting off his warrior guard, relaxing and becoming a human being again.  Then, literally and figuratively, he has to don his gear and head back into the fray.  It’s a terrific performance.

I also want to single out the fine, if brief, performance of Richard Madden, whom you may know from his breakout role as the protagonist in the limited series Bodyguard last year. Near the end of 1917, he appears as a front-line lieutenant at a moment just when he learns of his brother’s death in combat. There are few words, but his expression - as it moves from incomprehension to shock, to sorrow, then grief, along with a failed attempt to outwardly display the old stiff upper lip - speaks volumes. It is an encapsulation of the somber concluding themes of the film itself.  

If 1917 has a weakness, it is its failure to provide any real point of view or perspective about WWI (as noted above) other than admiration for the durability of the British fighting man and an exposition of the nearly meaningless idea that war is hell. With a change in uniforms and accents, it could have been about two German soldiers in the Great War. With a few more slight modifications, this could have just as easily been about two soldiers – from either side - in the US Civil War or the Napoleonic Wars.  As thrilling and at times moving as this picture is during the watching, one comes away feeling a bit empty.  Lord knows, there’s a lot that could be said about the waste of millions of lives in the First World War, the callousness of the commanders and dearth of sound leadership on both sides, the responsibility of the ruling classes, the catastrophic aftermath, and so on.  

Still, 1917 tells quite a story and provides one heck of a cinematic experience.

1 hour 59 minutes                     Rated: R - for violence (although one sees worse on many TV programs nowadays), disturbing images (the aforementioned strewn battlefield corpses) and language (a few well-earned f-bombs)

Grade: B+/A-    [thrillingly bravura cinema, with too little meat on the bone]

In general release.