Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Written by: Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Produced by: Sam Mendes, p.g.a., Pippa Harris, p.g.a., Jayne-Ann Tenggren, p.g.a., Callum McDougall, p.g.a., Brian Oliver
Executive Producers: Jeb Brody, Oleg Petrov, Ignacio Salazar-Simpson, Ricardo Marco Budé
Starring: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq with Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch.
A tense, end-of-seat drama about mateship and the moments in the machine of war that gives a solider back his humanity.
April 6, 1917 is when two young British soldiers, Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) and Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) are handed the task of saving sixteen-hundred lives.
Thinking the Germans have cut and run, Colonel Mackenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch) plans to give chase, to make a real difference in this bloody war, without realising the retreat is a trap – a strategy to lure the soldiers to certain death. One of those men, Blakes own brother.
This is a high-stakes drama that rides on the suspense rather than confronting with the gore of war. This is about mateship and family and the drive to help even when exhaustion is so deep you could drown just to rest.
1917 is a linear story that follows the conversation of the two mates as they take the task of the near impossible, across No Man’s Land, through the trenchers of the enemy, behind enemy lines, through a countryside not their own.
It’s a contrast of rotting dead bodies and wildflowers as we follow the young men, as they meet fellow soldiers on their mission, as they battle through traps and trip wires and giant rats.
The tension runs high because the film follows the story of the two soldiers closely so no one knows what comes next.
‘Sometimes, men just want to fight,’ warns General Erinmore (Colin Firth), the man sending them on their mission.
The only thing that matters is getting that message to Mackenzie.
A lot has to be said about the soundtrack here, a low vibrating drone creating that just below the surface feeling something bad is about to happen.
I jumped, that tension breaking with a shot or unexpected fall – you know that bad thing that happens. Not the super bad or expected, but the papercut or trip. That blip in life that catches you unaware. It’s kinda like that, but in a war, the consequences of a slip equals death.
I’m not a fan of war movies because it all gets a bit too real, too confronting. And there were moments here that stirred that anger. But this isn’t gory, it’s more about the suspense and characters, the young men fighting to make sense of where they are and where they’re being ordered to go. And making sense of it in the little things: giving a hand to get a truck out of a bog, to hand over a bottle to another because he knows he’s going to need it more. That’s how to make sense of it. By understanding the little things.