1917

There's a moment near the end of 1917 where a young man is floating down a river while gripping a log to stay above the water. Gradually the water around him fills with the fallen leaves of the cherry blossom trees that line the bank. It's almost serene but that serenity is rapidly broken when leaves are replaced with rotting, shattered corpses clogging up the flow. It's 1917 in a nutshell. A beautifully shot look at horror.

France. April 1917. The German are planning a trap and the British army is about to walk right into it. Communication lines have been cut and in an effort to stop 1600 men running to certain death two young soldiers by the names of Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake ( Dean-Charles Chapman) are given a message to deliver. One that involves crossing no man's land. The Germans have retreated they are told, there's little to worry about. So why were they given grenades?

1917 is a fantastic achievement. A war movie that doesn't say anything new but one that tells it's story in one continuous shot from beginning to end. Ok it doesn't really and there's one big cheat but the effect is creates is mesmerising. Roger Deakins deserves every bit of awards praise for this one. Mostly shot in broad daylight the roving camera doesn't hide anything from us, it never cuts away from the horror and atrocity of war and most importantly it lets us experience everything Schofield and Blake are going through. We, the audience are a constant companion and it's the kind of thing that you make you very appreciative of being alive now instead of then. It's a brilliant stylistic decision and it makes you very aware of the toll war takes on people and place. Just take note of the changing landscapes at the film moves forward. Something that wouldn't be as noticeable with normal cutting and editing. Bucolic meadows become claustrophobic trenches before devolving into nightmarish, surrealistic battlezones, grass replaced with rat eaten corpses and craters filled with blood and mud. It's appalling to see. War is truly hell. 

Schofield and Blake being front and centre shows us what war does to the body and mind too. The former, a veteran of the Somme carries a haunted look throughout the movie, the latter a baby faced corporal with a personal link to the mission at hand. Seeing them breaking down physically and psychologically is genuinely upsetting. MacKay and Chapman are both superb in their parts, traumatised but not yet turned robotic by what they've seen. They're thinly sketched but we can glean just enough about them to understand them and the interplay between them reminds us that for all it's spectacle and scope that this is a human story. A natter about cherry varieties, a wanking joke, a loveheart carved on a wall acknowledging the fact that the German war machine was made up of young men exactly like our two. It's the slivers of humanity drip fed to us by Mendes that stop the film from bludgeoning us totally. A woodland folk song, a gurgling baba and her forever grateful protector, a tearful thank you. Small moments that show us that war will never totally erase the human condition. 

It's these small moments and a couple of stunning performances from the leads that keep the film grounded when it's technical wonders threaten to overshadow the story. The look on Schofield's face as he races across a battleground, chaos breaking out behind him but it's his determined expression you'll be homed in on. The aftermath of a plane crash when the need to be decent backfires. A frantic chase through a bombed out village that relaxes into a weird type of peace after a chiaroscuro ordeal. At times you get the sense director Sam Mendes is torn between telling a more intimate story (one based on his grandfather's real war experiences btw) and letting loose with a big box of visual and pyrotechnical tricks. Thankfully the human side of the story wins out.

1917 is out in cinemas now. Go see it soon while it's still on the big screens. It's a watch that will leave you rattled and thankful.

Oh and keep an eye out for a certain Young Offender.