1917: A Sublime Work of Art

Although there have been a number of notable films over the past century set within World War I, there perhaps haven’t been as many grand standouts as those depicting the second World War. Of recent, though, we’ve seen a bold resurgence on the subject, as with the exemplary, Peter Jackson-produced documentary They Shall Not Grow Old (2018), a film using cutting-edge tech to bring wartime footage to life through vivid color restoration, voice acting, and sound effects. The overall effect is uncanny, allowing the war and its participants to speak to us fresh and direct, in the present.

With the release of the astonishing war drama 1917 (2019), we now have another recent monument to what it meant to be a soldier in the WWI battlefields, this time on a much more personal level. The film creates the sense of a single, unedited take as it follows two soldiers in delivering a written order to the front-line troops to call off an impending attack on the Germans (April 1917). With communication lines cut by the enemy slash-and-burn campaign, this urgent message will prevent 1,600 lives, including the brother of one of the messengers, from stumbling into an ambush by the Germans, who strategically withdrew to the new, densely-fortified Hindenburg Line (Operation Alberich) — not simply retreated, as is mistakenly assumed by the advancing 2nd Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment. The story is straightforward, allowing the audience to focus purely on the experience.

The film — directed/co-written by Sam Mendes, co-written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and expertly photographed by Roger Deakins — represents a new pinnacle in film craft and a shiver-inducing thrill in its experience. We are immersed directly into the action, near-real time, as Lance Corporal Will Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance Corporal Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) wind their way through decay-infested No Man’s Land and bombed-out towns in their goal to get the message delivered within eight hours. Beyond the exquisite camera work and detailed soundscape, the two lead actors authentically capture the frantic, desperate nature of their mission and the broader conflict. If there was ever a film with a set of actors that perfectly conveyed the transformative emotional arc of the mythic “hero’s journey,” this is it.

Although a fictional story, the film is inspired from first-hand bits conveyed to Sam Mendes by his grandfather, Alfred Mendes, who was a signaler/runner in WWI. The story can also be accepted as credibly grounded in events such as the Battle of Arras that took place in northern France from April to May 1917, one effectively resulting in a stalemate with 160,000 British casualties and another 125,000 on the German side. No doubt the controversial Somme Offensive that ended in late 1916, resulting in devastating casualties and no significant Allied breakthrough, echoed as a strategic warning to General Erinmore (Colin Firth) and likely gave weight to issuing his stand-down orders, to avoid ruinous losses.

These unforgiving territorial stalemates, with devastating loss of life and little net gain, were a common theme of violent trench warfare throughout WWI. Countless, claustrophobic trenches and vast swaths of rat-infested No Man’s Land were constant reminders of the ugliness and futility of the war: putrid, sallow mud; stagnant, infested water; decayed corpses and rotted limbs; dysenteric feces; infected animal carcasses; and soldiers shredded and hung in the uncaring, rabid teeth of barbed wire. 

“The ground is treacle-like. Schofield’s hands and knees sink into it as he pulls himself forward, his eyes are trained through the British wire towards the German lines.

The whole world is lunar and empty. Earth pounded to atoms, all mounds and holes.

Nothing moves. Nothing lives.”

— Mendes, S. Wilson-Cairnes, K. (2018). 1917. Retrieved from https://universalpicturesawards.com/1917/screenplay

1917 vividly renders these dire conditions. We feel the existential stakes and almost smell the foul air smothering the path to Croisilles Wood for the message’s delivery. Along the way, German snipers, hidden explosives, overhead dogfights, and burned-out towns present dangers to ensure no pause in the relentless trek. With cameos further into the story from such notables as Mark Strong and Andrew Scott, the journey is anchored at key points with brief respites of hope, guardians providing needed boost of courage and clarity for the messengers, and by extension for us. Yet even with moments of beautiful, serene vistas — green pastures or perhaps roiling rivers — there is only the illusion of safety. Death stalks in shadows and in the gray, dingy light of day, always vigilant, always voracious. No time to breath; no time to stop. Forward, ever forward…

As broader historical context for the film, “The Great War” of 1914–1918 was sparked predominantly with the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, by a Bosnian Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, in June 1914. This led to a ripple effect that triggered members of protective nation-alliances to take sides: Central versus Allied Powers, with the latter achieving victory in late 1918. Murky complexities behind the conflagration of this war, further muddied by existing imperialistic and militaristic aspirations of some countries, led many conscripted soldiers to question what they were specifically fighting for: beyond just country, a bloodied strip of land, or the soldier fighting at their side. In this film, we labor directly alongside two such soldiers, both of them emblematic of the multitude with families back home, where loved ones are unaware of the true horrors faced in wretched and brutal slogs across each infinite second and rancid sludge-pit.

“Concentrated machine gun fire from sufficient guns to command every inch of the wire, had done its terrible work. The Germans must have been reinforcing the wire for months. It was so dense that daylight could barely be seen through it. Through the glasses it looked like a black mass. The German faith in massed wire had paid off.”

— Coppard, George. With a Machine Gun to Cambrai. Cassell Military Paperbacks. London: Cassell, 1999.

In 1917, the camera follows these two courageous souls, Schofield and Blake, as if it were an embedded photographer or a third compatriot. The camera is supple and fluid as it pans across scarred landscapes and slides through tight trenches and crooked gaps to then seamlessly float out high above ground, always in a continuous, mystifying dance of oneness with the leads. This magical “one take” technique is crucial to the genetic foundation of the story, as it brings us into the intimate physical and emotional space of these young men, and it conveys the unrelenting, unstoppable momentum of the life-and-death mission. Far from being a distracting conceit, if one simply gives their trust over to the purity in skill of Mendes and Deakins, then the reward is a deep emotional bond with story and character, and a more empathetic understanding of a single soldier’s experience in WWI.

Another highlight of the film’s artistry is the production design, led by Dennis Gassner. Speaking of the burned-out village of Ecoust-Saint-Mein:

“We had to design the entire city...150 buildings...and then we had to destroy it. The art department designed it in 3D modeling, and then we destroyed it, and then built what we destroyed in the modeling.” — Dennis Gassner

Indeed, in this Ecoust, within the latter half of the film, is where all elements synergize into the highest level of cinematic art. It is nearing dawn, still dark, as Schofield sets off south-east for the river and Croisilles Wood. The camera gracefully tracks with Schofield’s exit from a house, out over the rubble then downward and further out along the main debris-strewn path. Ruins are on fire in the near distance; giant spectral shadows haunt the town’s charred structures. The moment crescendos into a soul-shattering, terrifying, yet oddly majestic feeling, as if entering the frightful gates of Dante’s Inferno, made all the more transcendent by Thomas Newman’s musical passage. It is a symbiotic union of film craft, each facet working at its peak, with the sum greater than the parts. The moment resonates beyond film — exalted and pure in its visceral experience, speaking directly to our collective unconscious. This is why we go to the movies, and 1917 has more such moments in store.

Because of the heart-pounding sensory immersion of 1917, one should attempt to see this in IMAX or the big screen. Thinking to prior years, the visually complex Gravity (2013) and Dunkirk (2017) seemed much less impactful when viewed on the smaller home screen. What sets this new film apart is an intimate connection with character and a deep gravitas in its blood; it reminds in some ways of the superb 2015 Hungarian film Son of Saul, where the camera likewise stayed closely bound to the main character (in that case, at Auschwitz, albeit with its own, unique camera style), and so 1917 may transcend this concern. My hope is it does, as it’s a brilliant and emotional work of timeless art.

In the grand scale, WWI eventually concluded in late 1918 with 20 million military and civilian deaths (twice that in casualties). A year later, the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles were established — means intended to ensure peaceful resolution, war reparations, and avoidance of major world conflicts in the future. Unfortunately, undercurrents of the war’s negotiated aftermath and nagging resentments would ripple years later into the second World War and its even larger atrocities.

In the smaller arena — that of a single life — the film 1917 ends where it started, with a soldier resting under a tree. Just as in the beginning, he is in thoughtful contemplation, though now changed forever in his understanding of the deepness of loss and love, and the longing for home. We are there with him, having gone through it together. If our connection was strong within, and if the film accomplished its task, we will have been blessed with a more humbling and profound sense of the personal cost of war and the sanctity of each life.

(As an aside and additional validation of the film’s reach, my college-aged daughter, who doesn’t care for war films, thought ‘1917’ was perhaps the best film she’s seen.)

Listed chronologically, my five favorite WWI films in the 2000s:

Joyeux Noel (2005)

The Red Baron (2008)

Beneath Hill 60 (2010)

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

1917 (2019)