1917 – Review

1917

Directed by: Sam Mendes

Runtime: 119 mins

You might walk into 1917 expecting the Allied answer to All Quiet On The Western Front. The first few minutes do little to disabuse you of the notion, opening on soldiers finding respite in an idyllic French field. But unlike All Quiet, 1917 is less interested in the interstitial moments of peace between fighting, preferring to focus on (quite literally) two soldiers (Dean Charles-Chapman and George MacKay) tasked with delivering a message through enemy lines to prevent a slaughter. Even so, director Sam Mendes mostly shies away from graphic depictions of gore and battle, relegating the ever-present spectre of death to the background.

Interestingly, 1917 reminds me of mother! (of all things). There’s a surreal, dreamlike quality to it. Scenes blur gently into the next, it’s unclear how one moment exactly connects to another, but it serves to heighten the reality and draw you deeper into the film. Mendes credits his grandfather as the one who told him the story, and with techniques like this, he works to recreate the feeling of a child experiencing the words of a storyteller.

I won’t delve deeper into the plot. It serves to drive the narrative and allow a few cameos by this or that character actor or big-name but isn’t truly important. Much like the war itself, it simply exists, but in the same way gravity does. It compels thousands and thousands to scurry through trenches and over the top, an invisible power seemingly above comprehension or even contemplation. Each frame strives to be a harrowing tableau of the horrors of war you would find hanging in a gallery. Frame centred on our beleaguered protagonists, corpses, broken wire and numb survivors artistically placed on a canvas of endless mud, charred ruins or claustrophobic trenches. In another movie, the imagery would be too much, but the restraint shown in the writing and acting prevents it from feeling sermonising. There’s no egregious historical foreshadowing winking to the audience and Mendes steers clear of most of the usual WW1 tropes. Even in the action scenes, the violence itself is often at the periphery.

Much of 1917 lives and dies on the work of the set designers and supporting actors. The
macabre artistry creates a world that exists beyond the frame, but the people that fill it,
desensitised and huddled against the war or trudging through automatic motions, breathe life (exhausted, trampled life) into it. It makes it all the more affecting as we watch the fresh(er) faced protagonists wear away, conviction and passion eroded to a dogged compulsion until a final collapse into a spent heap, joining the others as part of the background of the war. The two leads do an excellent job protecting a sense of camaraderie and imparting character to their actions, Chapman standing in for youthful enthusiasm with MacKay as the cautious stoic. WWI was one of the great pointless wastes of life, while this aspect of the story is told in the landscape and margins it makes it no less moving. I thoroughly recommend 1917.