1917: Heart-Stopping Drama Conjures the Sorrows and Horrors of the Great War
By Kim Hughes
Rating: A
A spiritual cousin to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and very nearly as affecting, director Sam Mendes’ towering drama 1917 pays homage to soldiers of the Great War while dropping viewers straight into the trenches that summarily characterize that wretched conflict.
It’s a simple story, wholly revealed in the trailer, but rendered with magnificent suspense and jaw-dropping visuals by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins. April 16, 1917. Young enlisted Britons Lance Corporal Blake and Lance Corporal Schofield (Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay) are called before General Erinmore (Colin Firth in a one-scene role) for a surprise meeting.
Read our interview with the stars of 1917
Intelligence has revealed that the Germans have surreptitiously retreated from a stronghold in Northern France. But an Allied unit of some 1,600 soldiers, unaware of this development, are poised to attack. They’ll be ambushed and slaughtered by the relocated German forces unless a warning can be delivered within a day. The young soldiers being dispatched have particular urgency for the assignment: Soldier Blake’s older brother is among those about to be killed. With that, Blake and Schofield are off.
What follows is a swift, heart-stopping, on-foot journey through former enemy territory and inside a now-deserted German base camp, a nighttime dash through an ethereally beautiful bombed-out French village, a harrowing swim in rivers polluted with death and finally, arrival at the Allied encampment where commanding office Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch, also in a one-scene role) is preparing to launch his doomed attack.
It’s impossible to overstate the immersive feel and psychological sway of 1917; Mendes inhabits those god-forsaken trenches in ways that are palpable, bringing the stink, filth, claustrophobia, and gallows humour to bear with stunning resonance. Similarly, the nighttime scene in the French village is lit by firelight, casting long shadows across hulking, devastated buildings as tiny figures struggle to navigate the space without meeting enemy fire. It’s exquisitely chilling.
Perhaps most powerful is the human element Mendes explores via Chapman and MacKay as Blake and Schofield, hapless and overwhelmed young soldiers witnessing the best and worst of humanity within the space of a single day, desperately trying to avert a disaster that could be headed off by text 100 years hence.
The very human pace and scale of the film persuasively underscores its unique place in time while making everything seem very real indeed. MacKay is already attracting Oscar buzz even in a year where heavy-hitters like Christian Bale, Joaquin Phoenix, and Antonio Banderas have skin in the game.
The film serves as a bookend of sorts to Peter Jackson’s stunning World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old. It too is based on fact, an account apparently told to Mendes by his paternal grandfather, Alfred Mendes. Also thrilling is the musical score by Thomas Newman — like Deakins, another Mendes stalwart who similarly energized Skyfall — which manages to simultaneously scan as epic and intimate. A stunning experience from beginning to end, 1917 is essential.
1917. Directed by Sam Mendes. Starring George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman with Benedict Cumberbatch and Colin Firth. Opens December 25th in select theatres; opens wide January 10.